In the land of Green Ginger there is a town called Marmalade, which is exclusively inhabited by guinea-pigs.

They are of all colours and of two sorts–the common ordinary smooth-haired guinea-pigs who run errands and keep green grocers shops–and the kind that call themselves Abyssinian Cavies–who wear ringlets and walk upon their toes.

And the short-haired guinea-pigs admire and envy the curls of the long-haired guinea-pigs.

Both kinds of the guinea-pigs go to the Barber especially on Saturdays.

Hucksterism in the Land of Green Ginger in Beatrix Potter’s The Fairy Caravan (Cotsen 21522)

The barber and his victim in Potter’s The Tale of Tuppenny illustrated by Marie Angel (Cotsen 11853)

If you want to find out about what happened when the bald guinea pig Tuppenny tried three treatments of Quintessence of Abyssinian Artichokes, the hair wash invented (and untruthfully promoted) by the barber, you’ll have to find a copy of The Tale of Tuppenny (1971) with illustrations by Marie Angel or The Fairy Caravan (1929), where Potter first published it.

The djinn. Noel Langley, The Land of the Green Ginger illustrated by Edward Ardizzone (author’s copy).

I don’t know if Noel Langley (1911-1980) learned about the Land of Green Ginger from Beatrix Potter’s Fairy Caravan. Perhaps not, because there are no guinea-pigs, just a djinn of the lamp, three suitors competing for the hand of lovely princess Silverbud, a feisty mouse, Omar Khayyam the tent maker, a flying carpet, and a dragon with a heliotrope tongue who likes his donkey with lettuce salad, tomatoes sliced thin. Everything needed for a sequel to the story of Aladdin.

And who was Noel Langley? Born and educated in Durban, South Africa, he wrote and illustrated for children The Tale of the Land of Green Ginger (1937), which helped get him a seven-year contract with MGM. His Hollywood writing credits include The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (1939), Scrooge (1951), Ivanhoe (1952), and Snow White and The Three Stooges (1961).

Poster for the Wizard of Oz screenplay with Langley’s name at the head of the list of writers.

Langley also turned out plays, short stories and novels, but what he is remembered for in addition to the screenplay for The Wizard of Oz is his over-the-top pseudo-Oriental fantasy, The Land of Green Ginger, which he rewrote in 1966 and 1975, both accompanied by the illustrations of Edward Ardizzone.

The hero of The Land of Green Ginger, Prince Abu Ali, is not the likeliest of lads.

He could never raise his voice in foolish rage, or be a tattle-tale behind your back.

He was, in fact, quite hopeless.

Any sensible person would put their money on the other two suitors, Wicked Prince Tintac Ping Foo or Rubdub Ben Thud of Arabia. Of the two, I prefer tall, skinny, mercenary Prince Tintac Ping Foo because of his way with words. Here is a conversation with his father, the Shah of Persia, in which it is revealed that Rubdub Ben Thud has stolen a march on Tintac Ping Foo.

“What? Rubdub Ben Thud?” shrilled the Wicked Prince in fiercest ire. “That balloon-faced butterball? Do you dare to tell me he has the silly sauce to pit himself against a paragon of loveable manly virtues like me?”

“I’m afraid so. Yes,” said the Shah of Persia.

“Oh har! Oh har! oh, har!” scoffed Tintac Ping Foo scornfully. I’d like to be there when they throw him out on his ear; but it’s far too far beneath my delicate dignity.!”

“I quite agree,” agreed his father insincerely, “and I’d laugh as loudly as you my son; except that my spies inform me that Sulkpot Ben Nagnag looks with favor on his suit, and has invited him to lunch.”

The Wicked Prince Tintac Ping Foo went as purple in the face as a stick of jealous rhubarb, and shook his fists toward the sky.

The author’s illustration of the wicked prince. Langley, The Tale of the Land of the Green Ginger (1937) (Cotsen 10198)

Prince Abu Ali and Silverbud united at last as illustrated by Ardizzone. The Land of Green Ginger (author’s copy)

But The Land of Green Ginger is a fractured fairy tale, so virtue will out, no matter which of the three versions you read. If you crave more of the rhodomontade quoted above, pass by the first edition and run, do not walk, to the 1975 version which is available in a handsome paperback from David R. Godine. Sometimes it is just too humid and hot to tackle the volumes like War and Peace,Infinite Jest, or 1Q84 on a summer reading list, whereas something light and frivolous like the Land of Green Ginger goes down like a scoop of coconut sorbet.

Perhaps, oh patient and forbearing reader, a small sigh has escaped your lips because you wish that this magical realm could be found on Google Maps. Actually, if you go to the East Riding of Yorkshire and find the bottom of Whitefriargate in Hull upon Kingston, you can visit the Land of Green Ginger. Or you can read the books. Take your pick.

The Land of Green Ginger in Hull.

The Land of Green Ginger over Samarkand.

]]>https://blogs.princeton.edu/cotsen/2015/07/where-is-the-land-of-green-ginger/feed/0Curator’s Choice: Two Muenchener Bilderbogenhttps://blogs.princeton.edu/cotsen/2015/07/curators-choice-two-muenchener-bilderbogen/
https://blogs.princeton.edu/cotsen/2015/07/curators-choice-two-muenchener-bilderbogen/#commentsSat, 25 Jul 2015 15:31:57 +0000http://blogs.princeton.edu/cotsen/?p=2729Continue reading →]]>This spring our colleague Julie Mellby in Graphic Arts presented Cotsen with over a dozen Muenchener Bilderbogen. Their publisher Braun & Schneider issued 1230 of these illustrated broadsides between 1848 and 1898, which were available individually or bound up in sets annually. Cotsen’s holdings consist mostly of sets that look to have been bound up and sold between 1900 and the late 1920s. There are collections of sheets starring Kasparel, the German Mr. Punch, an assortment of twenty-four sheets issued with a cover design of a clown throwing Bilderbogen out of the tower window of Munich’s Frauenkirche, Lustiges aus der Tierwelt, thirty-eight sheets about the comic antics of animals, and another motley group of thirty-two sheets enticingly titled Wer will lachen? [Who wants to laugh?]. Also on the shelves are some English-language translations, Walk up! Walk up! and see the fool’s paradise: with the many wonderful adventures there; as seen in the strange surprising peep show of Professor Wolley Cobble, published by John Camden Hotten around 1871.

This is a wonderful addition to Cotsen’s collection of late nineteenth-century French and German popular prints for children, which were forerunners of the comic strip. The Muenchener Bilderbogen was one of the most influential of them all and featured the work of Victor Adamo, Wilhelm Busch, Lothar Meggendorfer, Adolf Oberlander, Count Pocci, and Moritz von Schwind. (von Schwind’s “Herr Winter” was featured in another post on this blog). The standard for artistic excellence was such that a writer for the journal The Academy (August 7 1880) wished that the Bilderbogen were more widely available in England because they were a wonderful way of introducing children to the history of art.

This seems like extraordinarily high praise for anything connected with the comics and funny papers… So could these German broadsides have been that much better than their Anglo-American counterparts? (Some of the American ones were uncredited reprints of German ones with awful translations of the captions.) Processing the prints from Julie was a good way to see if there was any truth in the journalist’s statement about their excellence.

Two prints caught my eye because of the way the artists used lines of characters to organize the overall composition. The first one was the fifth edition of number 1177 in the series, “Maerchenzug” [Fairy tale parade] by Hermann Vogel (1854-1921). The colors and printing quality don’t seem to have deteriorated over time, as I would have expected.

Cotsen item 7170756

“Maerchenzug” is divided into three horizontal panels, with a mass of characters moving from right to left. The three captions below each panel, however, read from left to right, with the quatrain identifying individual characters in the cluster above it. In order to go back and forth between the figures and the words, the eye has to distinguish the boundaries of the three groups that make up the panel, but it still sees the line of characters as a whole.

top panel

My favorites in the top panel are the cocky Frog Prince, Puss in Boots, and the Bremen Town Musicians, but the figures of Hansel and Gretel and a dreaming child are also there. In the other two panels, look for more frogs and dwarves, a handsome prince or two, a wicked stepmother being punished (that one is tricky), and a book of Grimm’s fairy tales. Not all the characters in this fairy tale puzzle picture are mentioned in the captions, so even Jack Zipes who knows his Grimm cold, might have to work a bit to identify the characters from the lesser known fairy tales.

Middle panel

Bottom panel

The second print, number 577 (also in a fifth edition), “Der Knabe Whittington und seine Katzen,” by Eduard Ille (1823-1900) retells the familiar story of Dick Whittington in four horizontal panels. Its style couldn’t be more different than that of “Maerchenzug.”

Cotsen item 7170689

At first each of the panels appears to be one continuous image, but look at it more closely and it’s quite difficult to ignore the spaces between the two blocks that compose each panel. The figures, which are all in black including the Europeans, are drawn in profile almost as if they were silhouettes. Their limbs have a static quality, almost as if frozen in space and time.

First panel

What helps propel the narrative along is the careful positioning of the heads and the direction of their gaze: in the second panel, you can see the word travelling from left to right, from one person to the next down the line. And the word is that help is in sight. The panel is infested with climbing, clinging, leaping, creeping, congregating mice.

Second panel

In the third panel, Whittington’s cats get to work and the inhabitants dispose of the vermin carcasses with glee. Look closely at the characters’ headdresses, clothing, and accessories at the upper three panels and you’ll find they have been carefully individuated so that you can identify them throughout. The text says that it takes place in Djakarta, but the costumes may be a fantasia on authentic Indonesian garments. This part of Whittington does take place in a country where there are no cats, but an exact location isn’t important to the action. For Ille, it seems to have been a major source of inspiration.

Third panel

The people are so grateful to Whittington for extermination services and presentation of four kittens to the nation that he and the two old cats are sent off in fine style–you can see the publisher’s name emblazoned on the camel’s caparisons–in the final panel.

Fourth panel

The journalist in The Academy was onto something, I think. And thank you, Julie, for the gift of Muenchener Bilderboden.

]]>https://blogs.princeton.edu/cotsen/2015/07/curators-choice-two-muenchener-bilderbogen/feed/0An F. A. O. Schwartz memoryhttps://blogs.princeton.edu/cotsen/2015/07/an-f-a-o-schwartz-memory/
https://blogs.princeton.edu/cotsen/2015/07/an-f-a-o-schwartz-memory/#commentsThu, 16 Jul 2015 20:13:40 +0000http://blogs.princeton.edu/cotsen/?p=2722Continue reading →]]>The day before the Cotsen gallery opened to the public on Halloween 1997 (or was it the day before the dedication on the 30th???), F. A. O. Schwartz shipped a great big box from Mr. Cotsen to Firestone Library. What with all the excitement in the countdown to the festivities, I didn’t have a clue what was in it or why Mr. C. had been shopping at one of Manhattan’s premier merchants of dreams.

I really should have guessed. When I was Mr. Cotsen’s private librarian working down in the Neutrogena Corporation offices near L.A. International Airport, there were soft sculptures everywhere. There was a life-sized wolf in an ice cream suit and a homely Holstein wearing a green print dress seated at the reception area. Sometimes visitors looked askance at the wolf when he was putting the move on the unresponsive cow. In the halls there was a small roving flock of woolly sheep arranged according to whim of the firm’s executives (or so it was rumored around the water cooler). I’m sure I don’t remember the half of them. (Cotsen did inherit Baa-sheba, one of the Neutrogena flock and she hangs out on the second floor of the Wall of Books with Harry the louche bear from the Big Island in Hawaii).

But back to the F. A. O. Schwartz mystery box. It contained a very large, handsome stuffed tiger, who was appointed Cotsen’s official gallery greeter on the spot and without a national search. He was installed with all due dignity in his new post on top of the Wall of Books, where he has been ever since. I am happy to report that he has never dropped from his perch in the entryway on unsuspecting children. That may be because there are enough clever little ones who know to stroke his paw on the way in!

Does the tiger have a name? Yes, he does, but it has never been revealed until now… I named him Shere Khan after the wolf-child Mowgli’s great striped enemy in Rudyard Kipling’s Jungle Book.

Mr. C and the employeer in 1997

And here’s to F. A. O. Schwartz. We’re looking forward to its reopening in a new space somewhere in the Times Square neighborhood soon…

]]>https://blogs.princeton.edu/cotsen/2015/07/an-f-a-o-schwartz-memory/feed/0You can still attend “Creating Children’s Books” the October 2014 symposium at UPenn’s Kislak Center!https://blogs.princeton.edu/cotsen/2015/07/you-can-still-attend-creating-childrens-books-october-2014-symposium-at-the-kislak-center-at-upenn-hosts-a-conference-on-childrens-literature/
https://blogs.princeton.edu/cotsen/2015/07/you-can-still-attend-creating-childrens-books-october-2014-symposium-at-the-kislak-center-at-upenn-hosts-a-conference-on-childrens-literature/#commentsSat, 04 Jul 2015 16:12:39 +0000http://blogs.princeton.edu/cotsen/?p=2684Continue reading →]]>If you are interested in the modern American picture book, but weren’t able to make it down to the Kislak Center in the University of Pennsylvania’s Van Pelt Library on October 18-19 for the “Creating Children’s Books” symposium, it’s possible to watch the videos of the four lively Saturday sessions. Here is a who’s who of the program (the link to the session follows the names of the panelists):

]]>https://blogs.princeton.edu/cotsen/2015/07/you-can-still-attend-creating-childrens-books-october-2014-symposium-at-the-kislak-center-at-upenn-hosts-a-conference-on-childrens-literature/feed/0Cotsen’s Covert Collections, part 1: A Pair of Burmese (Myanma) Buddhist Manuscriptshttps://blogs.princeton.edu/cotsen/2015/06/cotsens-covert-collections-part-1-a-pair-of-burmese-myanma-buddhist-manuscripts/
https://blogs.princeton.edu/cotsen/2015/06/cotsens-covert-collections-part-1-a-pair-of-burmese-myanma-buddhist-manuscripts/#commentsFri, 26 Jun 2015 15:00:24 +0000http://blogs.princeton.edu/cotsen/?p=2582Continue reading →]]>Around Princeton, Cotsen Children’s Library is most often referred to as “the children’s library” (with a myriad of connotations). In the research community, the library is well-known for its wealth of children’s literature, folk tales, educational material, toys, manuscripts, and juvenilia. Material is available in scores of languages spanning the last 400 hundred years or so. But Cotsen is also home to an array of fantastic and surprisingly rare material that most wouldn’t expect to find given our collection interests and reputation.

In a blog series I’d like to call “Cotsen’s Covert Collections” (so I’m calling it that), I will showcase some of the more unexpected collections material that I come across. These are the items that I find in the vaults that make me say: “I can’t believe we have this. I don’t quite know what it is, but this is really cool!”.

The first items I’d like to show are a pair of Burmese (Myanma) Buddhist manuscripts:

2 volumes, Cotsen 101728

The shape of these manuscripts differs drastically from a typical Western bound manuscript. Both feature accordion folded sections of rag paper pasted together between highly decorative red and gold painted wood boards.

The manuscripts have no spine like in a typical codex. The sheets are pasted together at even intervals and stacked, they are only connected to the binding at the terminal ends.

Each panel can be read separately or the whole work can be unfolded vertically like a wall chart. In this way, the manuscripts are something between a bound manuscript and a scroll. Unlike a western manuscript or a typical scroll, however, the works are double-sided. On one side the works feature hand painted illustrations and text, on the reverse side the works feature only inscribed text.

The top manuscript in the first picture above.

The bottom manuscript in the first picture above.

The record indicates that both manuscripts were made around 1890 in Burma (Myanmar). This information was probably provided from a dealer’s description which we no longer have with us. Though the items themselves provide no indication of place or date (as far as I can tell) the manuscript style is iconically Burmese; and we’ll just have to take the date on face value for now.

Judging by the skill of the paintings, the mistakes in the texts, and the similarities of the works, I think it’s safe to assume that one artist probably authored both works; and that he or she was an amateur or novice.

Though my knowledge of the Burmese (Myanmar) language can hardly be called knowledge, the script does seem to differ from modern Burmese. My guess is that the manuscripts were written in Burmese-pali as is typical of other more ornate Buddhist manuscripts from Myanmar called Kammavaca. Burmese-pali uses an older form of Burmese script in order to write the Pali language, the liturgical language of Theravada Buddhism (the dominant branch of Buddhism in South East Asia).

The first manuscript seems to depict various previous lives of the Buddha juxtaposed against his final earthly state. Called Jataka tales, stories about previous lives of the Buddha are moral tales in which a particular virtue is correctly exercised by the Buddha in one of his past forms:

1st panel, Possibly a short depiction of The Story of Chaddanta Elephant

4th panel

Of course, the text on the reverse side of the manuscript would probably offer further clues about the content of the images. Unfortunately, we don’t yet know what the text says either:

First text panel

Last text panel

The second manuscript might be focused on scenes from the life of Siddhārtha Gautama, but I’ll admit it’s difficult for me to discern:

2nd panel

6th panel (luckily this final panel is not stained by red dust which has soiled the rest of the work)

1st text panel

Last text panel

By including items like these on the blog, I hope to make it more transparent that Cotsen has a variety of materials that one would not expect at “the children’s library”. Hopefully, bringing these objects to light means that someone more knowledgeable than me can help us discover more about these wonderful (and under-described) materials. We have a range of unusual or unexpected artifacts, books, and objects. I hope this blog series will inspire researchers to see what else they can find in our collection.

Before she catches sight of a waistcoated, watch-wearing rabbit popping down a hole, a drowsy Alice famously questions, “What is the use of a book…without pictures or conversations?” Mr. Lloyd E. Cotsen apparently agreed with Alice’s wisdom. Cotsen, a 1950 Princeton alumnus whose family library for his own kids seeded the Cotsen Children’s Library, made illustrated works the focus of this special collection of international and historical children’s materials.

“Linked Pictures” for All Ages

Among Chinese materials, which make up the largest non-English language collection at Cotsen, are more than 1400 heavily illustrated story books. The Chinese term for such books, particularly those with images on nearly every page, is lian huan hua (LHH, 连环画), literarily meaning “linked pictures.” LHH books were not born as children’s literature, but were intended to entertain all ages when the format took shape in Shanghai in the 1920s. China’s population was poorly educated during much of the twentieth century. Semi-literate adults relied upon visuals to comprehend stories and avidly consumed LHH, just as children did. When Italian journalist Gino Nebiolo travelled on a night train in China during the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976), he noticed that every passenger received a copy of LHH along with hot tea from the stewardess, and that workers, petty officials, and peasants were “all completely absorbed in their reading” (Nebiolo viii). (The modern urge to seek entertainment and distraction from handheld touch screens during any idle moment is not an invention by Apple, after all.) It wasn’t until the mid-1980s that the “one-format-fits-all” model of print-entertainment began to disintegrate, owing to the steadily rising Chinese literacy rate, access to broadcast media, and the influence of Western- and Japanese-style “linked pictures” such as comic books and picture books.

The World Turned Upside Down (天翻地覆). 上海: 东亚书局, [19–] 13 x 15 cm. (Cotsen 31152) An early LHH work from the Republic of China.

Dated between the 1920s and 1940s, The World Turned Upside Down is one of the earliest LHH works held at the Cotsen Children’s Library. It is an illustrated story based on a Chinese creation myth. The publisher cleverly uses the cover to advertise its other LHH titles, which include Chinese mythology and folktales, kung fu stories, romance, and historical fiction, typical for early LHH works. Pre-1950 LHH copies are rare today, partly due to the ephemeral nature of flimsy paperbacks produced for the mass market, and partly due to recurring censorship campaigns launched by the Communist regime after 1950.

One panel from LHH Little Passengers offers a close illustration of Nebiolo’s report. Dressed in then-fashionable military uniform, a fifth-grader reads an LHH story about the soldier Lei Feng to a little boy he meets on the train. LHH was arguably the most popular and accessible reading format for Chinese children until the mid-1980s and was frequently referenced in the text and images of children’s books.

Layout and Art Styles

The Cotsen collection offers plenty of examples to help us appreciate the diverse visual styles, text-image relationships, subject matter, and intended audiences of Chinese “linked-picture” books. The prevailing layout of LHH includes one image on every page, horizontally oriented, accompanied by a short text along one side of the panel. Because most LHH art comprises black line drawings, it is tempting to equate Chinese LHH with comic books. Unlike in Western comics and Japanese manga, though, conversation balloons are not a persistent component of Chinese LHH. In fact, the 1970s saw a tendency to do away with speech balloons, which were thought to ruin the integrity of the pictures (Fei 474). Compared with comic books familiar to the West and Japan, most Chinese LHH from the twentieth century rely more on text than on sequential art for storytelling. This particular style of “linked pictures” would eventually give way to comic books, characterized by a tighter complementary relation between the text and visuals, and color picture books, which are better suited for beginning readers.

Although the page size of LHH books varies widely, those produced during the heyday of the format are typically palm-sized, measuring in the neighborhood of four by five inches. Miniature-size LHH works, defined as under 10 centimeters tall, were clearly designed with young readers’ small hands in mind. As shown in another post "Fresh from China," some miniature books were thoughtfully constructed accordion style on thick paper to accommodate children’s limited motor skills.

Although LHH is most often associated with black line drawings printed on horizontal booklets, the umbrella term is inclusive of a wide array of visual and storytelling styles. Let’s showcase some examples.

Part of a “Children’s Linked-Picture Story”(儿童连环图画故事) series, this title from early People’s Republic of China very much resembles beginning reader books found in today’s market. The brief text is thoughtfully printed in large font and with generous line spacing. Set in Tiên Lãng, Vietnam in the midst of the Indochina War, A Little Iron Boy is presented as a true biographical story of a ten-year-old Vietnamese boy who would rather endure torture than reveal the hiding place of three Viet Minh cadres to the French military.

One subgroup of LHH is movie spin-offs akin to what would be called “photonovels” in English. The format consists of film stills with captions, making it a most satisfactory proxy for moviegoing long before video tape players entered Chinese homes in the 1990s.

The booklet is based on a black-and-white 1963 movie by the same title. Lei Feng is the soldier hero whom the two boys are reading about during their train ride in the aforementioned Little Passengers. He has been featured in numerous LHH editions as a self-sacrificial role model.

After School is a spin-off of a 1972 anime movie directed by Yan Dingxian (严定宪). In this bright-colored anime story, children battle against an old candy man’s evil attempt to corrupt the politically upbeat message of their jump-rope rhymes. Numerous children’s stories from the 1950s to the end of the Cultural Revolution pit politically precocious children against regressive adults. Quick to embrace new and revolutionary ideas, children in fiction and nonfiction accounts accomplish feats beyond their tender age: a breakthrough in agricultural experiments that have been dismissed by older peasants; detecting a former land-owner’s sabotage of the collective property of the commune; or facilitating the arrest of an anti-revolutionist who might even be an authority figure in the child’s own family.

The Old Bean’s Birthday Party is a picture book that introduces the versatile industrial uses of soybeans. An elderly soybean is celebrating his birthday. His “offspring” (i.e., various soybean products) show up in all shapes, colors, and states of matter. From the left to right are: soybean oil, the elderly bean, a baby soybean, a soybean-based tire, soy sauce, soy milk, soy paint, and a bar of soap—an adorable and playful one at that. Imaginative and endearing anthropomorphic color images, text with pinyin phonetic guide, and relatively large page size make this book a friendlier offering for beginning readers than most LHH works.

Regretfully, many exquisitely illustrated picture books seem to have eluded critical attention and are little known today. Here are two examples.

Where is My Inkstone is a humorous wordless picture book that portrays a sloppy boy’s frantic search for his inkstone, without which he cannot do his homework. By relying solely on visuals to narrate the plot, wordless picture books are the quintessential manifestation of “linked pictures” or “sequential art.”

Western-style comic books and strips make up a small portion of domestic LHH works.

A cross between Chinese-style LHH and Western comics, this edition of Tibet Back to the Big Family of the Homeland is dated about one year after the People’s Liberation Army entered Lhasa on October 26, 1951. This informational book covers the geography, history, social life and customs, religion, politics, and current affairs of Tibet. It presents a warm and collaborative relationship between the new People’s Republic of China and religious leaders of Tibet. The 1959 Tibetan Uprising, which led to the fourteenth Dalai Lama’s exile to India, was still years away. Unlike the treacherous dissident he would later be portrayed as in Chinese official media, this Dalai Lama (upper-right panel) is simply introduced as Tibet’s religious and political leader, at an impressively young age of eighteen sui (meaning seventeen years old).

Notice how dirty-looking the book cover of our copy appears? Well, the protagonist of this comic book is a boy nicknamed “the King of Grossness” for his shameless neglect of personal hygiene. We shudder to think what type of young readers this copy has attracted! The book is the basis of an immensely popular thirteen-episode anime show by the same title released in 1987.

For Instruction and Entertainment

In his classic Understanding Comics Scott McCloud (20) points out that comics have been recognized as an excellent communication tool. The following examples show how the format of “linked pictures” has been utilized for literacy education, political socialization, and information dissemination among the general Chinese population and among specialized audiences.

The Radio is part of a Become Educated LHH series, which, according to an advertisement page at the end, uses simple language to help illiterate and semi-literate readers learn Chinese characters and advance literacy skills.

A preoccupation with the literacy and education of the Chinese population is reflected in another title, also dated 1958. General Line paints a utopian picture of a prosperous China in the near future, promised by the “General Line for Socialist Construction” adopted by the Chinese Communist Party in May 1958. One page shows each member of a three-generation family being engaged in reading, music, art, and science. Notably, the grandma, who is dressed no differently than an elderly peasant woman, is playing the piano. In reality, the General Line policy heralded the reckless Great Leap Forward campaign and the massive famine of 1959-1961. To what degree should rosy pictures like these be held accountable for fanning people’s frenzy over what turned out to be a disastrous campaign?

This title exemplifies perhaps the most sobering use of comic art. Published within three months of the enactment of “Regulations of the People’s Republic of China for Punishment of Counter-Revolutionaries,” it reprints all twenty-one articles of the ordinance, offers paraphrases in plain language and definitions of legal terms, and supplies visuals characteristic of political cartoons. The image above illustrates Article 3, which metes out death penalties or life imprisonment to those who “collaborate with imperialism and commit treason.” The colophon page indicates a staggering print run of 1.5 million copies. An LHH rendition of the first marriage law passed by the PRC in 1950 was also available by the same publisher.

On a no less serious note, this LHH has been published by the Chinese People’s Liberation Army to teach basic defense knowledge against atomic, chemical, and biological weaponry attacks. Its title page indicates the book as “training material for internal distribution,” meaning it should not be made publicly available. It is always a question how widely such semi-classified “internal publications” actually circulated. Bibliographical records suggest that the Office of the Deputy Chief of the General Staff for Intelligence, Ministry of National Defense in Taiwan managed to procure another LHH that trains militia on defending against the same types of attacks. In 1972, when the Chinese and Taiwanese governments remained in a state of war, the latter’s intelligence office made a facsimile of that book but labelled a derogatory "Communist bandits’" to the beginning of the title (Guo fang bu).

This LHH is a collection of satirical cartoons that criticize One Hundred Thousand Whys, a wildly successful children’s popular science series published by the Shanghai-based Juvenile and Children’s Publishing House in the early 1960s. Mathematician Zhang Yitang, who was born in 1955 in Shanghai, mentions the series as his favorite reading from childhood in an interview (“Mei” 1). The best-selling series came under harsh condemnation and was banned during the Cultural Revolution for allegedly sending feudal, capitalist, and subversive messages to youth. The LHH allows us to witness how, even in the case of lively children’s books on science (a seemingly neutral political zone), there was no escape from the snare of power struggles and ideological wars.

“Linked Pictures” for Speakers of Other Tongues

Chinese LHH have been released in multiple languages to reach an international audience and ethnic minority groups. During the Maoist era, the aim was not to maximize profit, but to spread Communist and revolutionary gospels to the non-Chinese world.

A Kazakh translation of a biographical story about the childhood and adolescence of the aforementioned hero Lei Feng. The Latin alphabet used in the book has become obsolete and been replaced by the Arabic script currently used by the Kazakhs in China.

A Uyghur edition of Anton Chekhov’s short story “A Chameleon” in color LHH. The Uyghurs are among the top five largest Chinese ethnic minority groups. Likewise, the Latin alphabet used in the book is now obsolete. The Uyghurs in China have also adopted the Arabic script for their writing system.

This photo shows an open-air rental stall for LHH, where readers could hire the booklets at a cheap price. The renting business model was highly successful in maximizing the accessibility of LHH for the poorest consumers. Upon close examination, the title “Travelling Children’s Library” is a misnomer for the photo. Engrossed in their reading are a little girl, an adolescent boy, and an adult, plus a curious toddler who is likely tagging along with his big sister, getting a healthy dose of interest in reading for fun.

The modern multiplication of publication formats, broadcast media, and digital communication tools means that the Chinese will not return to a time when linked-picture booklets served as the prevailing platform to inform and entertain the general populace. Given their immense popularity and wide influence, LHH open a vivid window into the literature and art, childhood, social life, and political dynamics of twentieth-century China. Cotsen’s LHH collection has not been systematically reorganized, but the bibliographical records of most titles can be located by keyword searches for “comic books” or “lian huan hua,” with a limit by language to Chinese.

]]>https://blogs.princeton.edu/cotsen/2015/06/chinese-illustrated-books/feed/0Traveling the World via a Board Game…https://blogs.princeton.edu/cotsen/2015/05/traveling-the-world-via-a-childrens-game/
https://blogs.princeton.edu/cotsen/2015/05/traveling-the-world-via-a-childrens-game/#commentsFri, 29 May 2015 17:00:26 +0000http://blogs.princeton.edu/cotsen/?p=2440Continue reading →]]>Imagine getting paid to play with children’s books and sometimes even with children’s games. As a cataloger, I get to “play with” them, in a sense — but it’s not quite the same as “playing” games, I assure you — and I usually learn something and almost always enjoy doing it too: “instruction with delight,” as John Newbery famously phrased it.

This all ran though my mind while cataloging a new Cotsen acquisition: a French board-game adaptation of Jules Verne’s Around the World in 80 Days, titled: Le Voyage Autour du Monde en 80 Jours: d’apres le Roman de Jules Verne: Jeu de Société.

Cotsen’s version of the game-board isn’t itself titled, but the caption title I used to catalog the item comes from the accompanying four-page printed instruction and rule booklet. Roches Frères has added the imprint of their Paris printing house on the bottom left of the board, in the white margin, but it’s a little hard to see in the above photo (a better view is in a photo below). I’m still looking for information about the Paris firm Roches Frères, but the they seem to have been active in Paris from the 1880s through 1900, based on the dates of other of their publications cataloged by other libraries. After 1900, another Roches Frères published in Avignon until 1911 or so — maybe the firm moved? (Research also turned up a third, earlier firm named “Roches Frères,” this one publishing in New Orleans from about 1813 into the early 1820s, presumably a different entity altogether, but so far I can’t say so definitely).

“Très amusant”… Description and rules of the game.

Cotsen’s game-board seems to be one of at least 8 different versions of the game issued by various publishers between 1874 and 1928, an apparent testament to successful sales and ongoing popularity with children and/or grown-ups. (Verne’s novel first appeared in print in 1872.) With children’s books and games, it’s always hard to know how much items’ sales connote their actual appeal to children themselves, since adults were generally the ones making the purchases. But I think a 50+ year run of publication and re-publication certainly suggests a popular item! Cotsen’s game board seems to be a relatively early version, based on the form of the title, the printer’s dates, and particularly a chronology of versions posted online.1

Unfortunately, the Cotsen copy of the the game arrived without the illustrated box it originally came in, six little hand-painted lead playing pieces (modeled on characters in the novel: Phileas Fogg, his servant Passepartout, etc.), currency tokens, dice, and dice cup. (Dice thus make a somewhat unusual appearance in a children’s game of this era, in lieu of a teetotum spinner — dice generally being shunned in children’s activities games for being associated with gambling and the unsavory world of vice. Perhaps this is because the mainspring of book’s plot is a bet?) But Princeton’s Graphic Arts Collection has a later (ca. 1915) version of the game that’s essentially complete, accompanied by an advertising flyer, which curator Julie Melby has blogged about. Both versions of the game board are the same size: fully opening out to 49 x 58 cm.

The game’s afoot! The game board’s first spaces, showing Fogg in London (with Roche Frères’ imprint below).

But let’s get back to the game itself! True to Jules Verne’s original story, the players begin in London, appropriately enough with space number 1 depicting Phileas Fogg (here called “Phogg”) and space 3 the scene where Fogg bets £20,000 (a colossal sum then!) with fellow-members of the Reform Club that he can completely travel around the world within 80 days. With that, he’s off on his trip leaving the familiar world of London and fashionable Saville Row (space 4) behind…

Through the Alps and a view of Mt. Vesuvius

In the game, players of the game race to be first to complete Fogg’s journey, the places and people encountered shown here in illustrations, within the numbered spaces and accompanying graphics, all brightly chromolithographed. First, it’s through France and Italy and onto a steamer across the Mediterranean, depicted by the nineteenth-century steam locomotive racing through a tunnel under the Alps (both new technological marvels then), a contemporary steam-ship, and a depiction of the Bay of Naples, with a smoking Mt. Vesuvius in the background. Vesuvius, whose spectacular volcanic eruption in 79 AD buried Pompeii and Herculaneum, also erupted some 14 times during the eighteenth- and nineteenth-centuries, and it often figures prominently in children’s literature of this period. This is due to a combination of factors, I think: the pure visual appeal of depicting an erupting volcano in hand-colored or color-processed illustrations, then relatively cutting-edge book technologies, the fascination that such volatile forces of nature hold for a child (or adult!) reader, the frequent attention paid to natural history in educational children’s materials during this period (and we’ll see another instance of this in another recently-cataloged work to be discussed in the following blog posting), as well as the way that volcanoes and natural disasters displayed the power of fate, human frailty, and the power of God or supernatural forces to eighteenth- and nineteenth-century readers.

Suez Canal, Port Said, and Aden

Middle Eastern people

Next, it’s through the Suez Canal — then, having recently opened in 1869 — via a canal steamer and on to the ports of Port Said, Egypt, and Aden, in what’s now Yemen, via what look like smaller and smaller sail-powered craft. Things are getting a little more adventurous… Along with scenery, the people Fogg encountered on the journey are also presented on game spaces in a manner somewhat reminiscent of the terrifically-popular illustrated European travel literature of this period, such as David Roberts’ Travels in Egypt & the Holy Land. The emphasis on visual artistic depictions of “exotic” places and people in the game — and in children’s literature generally — reminds us just how new and exciting such depictions were to Europeans at this time, something it’s easy to forget in our era of visual-media-on-demand in a world that seems to have “shrunk” in many ways.

Traveling through India…

On to Singapore and Hong Kong…

As the players move along the board, they see more of the sights that Verne had Fogg encounter: India, Hong Kong, Singapore, China, Indian rajahs, magicians… Modes of transportation also reflect the vicissitudes of journey described by Verne, for instance, the travelers must leave an Indian railroad (not fully completed, despite what Fogg had read in a London newspaper, which had prompted his bet!) and buy an elephant to proceed along the 50-mile gap in the railroad; the “iron horse” — wonderfully evoked by the French term “chemin de fer” (literally “road of iron”) — literally yields to traditional animal-powered locomotion.

Central game-board view of the globe, centering on the Pacific Ocean, unlike most European views

To win the bet, Fogg had to make it all the way around the world and back to London! So he and Passpartout begin the return leg of their trip across the Pacific Ocean. This provides the illustrator with an opportunity to show their dotted-line route on a slightly unusual view of the globe — at least for Europeans — one centered on the Pacific, not Atlantic, Ocean. Think of all the Mercator Projection cutaway views of the globe that you’ve seen with Europe and the Atlantic Ocean at the “center of the world” with the map “split” so the Pacific is an the “edges” of the earth. There’s no strictly logical, map-making reason for this presentation, other than cultural orientation — cultures just typically present themselves at the center of the world! (A British Library exhibition, “Magnificent Maps: Power, Propaganda and Art,” presented examples of this orientation in a variety of maps, produced by a wide variety of cultures and eras.) And don’t miss the purely illustrative “exotic” animals positioned around the globe — a visual rendition of “nature red in tooth and claw”

San Francisco and Great Plains, via “chemin de fer”

New York & and Statue of Liberty (dedicated, 1886)

Having crossed the Pacific from East to West, the travelers’ next leg in the journey takes them across the entire United States, also something of a mystifying wilderness expanse of land to Englishmen and Europeans at the time. Accordingly, the board spaces in the “inner loop” of the game-board depict San Francisco (and one of its legendary cable cars), the recently-completed Transcontinental railroad across the Great Plains (where distinctive American bison then ran free), a side-wheel paddle steamer, Chicago (whose Loop looks suspiciously like San Francisco!), and finally New York with its distinctive Statue of Liberty (dedicated only in place on Liberty Island in 1886, so this view may be an artistic imagining of the actual scene), before setting sail across the Atlantic.

Eventually, back in England after drama involving a missed ship, a mutinous crew, and a Scotland Yard detective detective who mistakenly arrests him for being a robber — all depicted on the ten or so last spaces on the game-board — Fogg is able to collect his bet, marry the girl (an Indian princess no less, Aouda, whom he had rescued during the journey), and enjoy the quintessential London vista of the River Thames, Tower Bridge, and St. Paul’s Cathedral.

Back to London in time to win the bet!

To find out more about such plot escapades, you’ll have to read the book for yourself — I have to say that I’m curious myself now to reread the story! — but I hope this blog posting has shown you something about how the world and some of its peoples were depicted on this nineteenth-century game-board. It really is remarkable how what’s essentially a backdrop for a game portrays so many facets of world geography and ethnography using a purely visual “vocabulary” with no language, (other than brief text labels): instruction with delight, indeed!

]]>https://blogs.princeton.edu/cotsen/2015/05/traveling-the-world-via-a-childrens-game/feed/0Horrid Henry’s Predecessorshttps://blogs.princeton.edu/cotsen/2015/05/horrid-henrys-predecessors/
https://blogs.princeton.edu/cotsen/2015/05/horrid-henrys-predecessors/#commentsWed, 27 May 2015 14:00:49 +0000http://blogs.princeton.edu/cotsen/?p=2387Continue reading →]]>May 4th the Department of Rare Books and Special Collections began the Big Move, where miles of rare materials were shifted into a cavernous new vault in Firestone Library ( its early and successful conclusion was celebrated in the previous post, “Moving Day in Feather Town”). During any collections move, books with problems crop up and sometimes combinations of them turn out to be unexpectedly interesting. When resizing books the other week, three nineteenth-century books featuring boys who are handfuls passed over my desk.

These days characters whose halos have slipped down around their shoulders are not exactly underrepresented in children’s books. Think of Francesca Simon’s Horrid Henry, whose antics have given rise to a multi-media empire. My trio of old books offer some pretty compelling evidence that punishments for boyish misdeeds has changed dramatically in children’s books as attitudes towards authority, curiosity, mischief, and mistakes have become more tolerant–or overly lenient, depending upon your point of view.

Contrast the implicit acceptance in the Horrid Henry series of children disrespecting adults with the Old Testament’s zero tolerance. In Kings 2:22-3, the prophet Elisha passes a pack of young louts on the road to Bethel. Because the King James Bible mistranslated the word for “boys” in the passage, they are usually understood to be little boys, not teenagers. These ancestors of the Purple Gang yell at Elisha, “Go up, you old baldy.” Elisha retaliates by cursing them and two female bears come out of the woods and maul forty-two of the no-goods. If the punishment doesn’t seem to fit the crime, Biblical scholars are inclined to think that for centuries readers really haven’t understood the text between the lines that explains what was really going between the young men and the prophet was much more serious than we realize.

The story of Elisha and the bears must have inspired many cautionary tales about bad boys who mess with the wrong person and get more than they bargained for. Another familiar type in cautionary tales is the no-good who disobeys his loving parents and comes to a spectacularly gruesome end. The history of the brothers Tommy and Harry in Daniel Fenning’s The Universal Spelling Book (1756) was in wide circulation from the mid-eighteenth to the late nineteenth centur7 and was even mentioned in Dickens’ David Copperfield. Harry the elder is a rotter and Tommy the younger is a Peter Perfect. Guess which brother is eaten by lions?

Nineteenth-century picture books are full of bad boys, but often they are shown making mischief in a series of detailed illustrations rather than starring in a continuous narrative. All three of the books I found during the Big Move–one French, one British, and one German–all fall into this category. In Les Proverbes de Pierre (1890), illustrator Jean Geoffrey dresses up his sturdy little devils in Pierrot costumes and sets them loose in the classroom and in the street. Notice that it is a young peep show operator (the one with what looks like a little tower strapped on his back), not an adult, who breaks up the squabble in the first illustration. In the second picture shows what can happen when the teacher steps out of the classroom. Is the boy in the upper left sending up his teacher? Where are the wild beasts?

Page 21, Cotsen 10743

The one boy waves a hat that reads “Ass” while his accomplices dance on a sign saying “Lazy.” Cotsen 10743, 1

In Young Troublesome (ca. 1850), John Leech gleefully shows just how much mischief a public school boy could make at home during the Christmas holidays. In this plate the adults stand by helplessly as the young pickle shows his little brothers and sisters how easy and delightful it is to slide down a bannister.

Plate 2, Cotsen 3141

There are also illustrations showing boys playing practical jokes that are anything but fun and games. In Ludwig Kies’ Der Kinder Art und Unart (ca. 1855′), the boys in the boat dump an elaborately dressed tailor overboard. The tailor’s terrified expression suggests he fears he will drown once his heavy clothes become waterlogged. The boys, who may be working class, show no remorse for what they have done and it looks as if no one will step forward and punish them. Likewise Leech’s Young Troublesome seems to think nothing of interfering with the servants while they are working, or apologizing when his prank ruins their clothing. The hapless servant may have no other recourse than complaining to his comrades below the stairs.

Plate [53], Cotsen 24963

Plate 10, Cotsen 3141

Of all activities forbidden to children, playing with fire may have been one of the most satisfying because it was so risky. From the late eighteenth century onward, it is not especially difficult to find illustrations of children whose clothes have caught fire, a very real possibility in homes where there were multiple fireplaces with open grates. William Darton senior liked such subjects, but no engraving in his firm’s juvenile books can compare with this one from Der Kinder Art und Unart of a boy running out of the hen house, which he accidentally set aflame. Unlike many of the plates in this book, no adult appears to reprimand the little arsonist (or mourn his passing as the kitties did Hoffmann’s Paulinchen).

Plate [30], Cotsen 24963

In sharp contrast, Young Troublesome and his assistant look as if they have deployed every bit of firepower behind the scenes to bring the juvenile theater production of The Miller and His Men to a triumphant conclusion. The size of the explosion seems to have given his papa pause. Or perhaps his ears were ringing from all the racket from the special effects.

Plate 7, 3141

Last but not least, is this illustration of a boy on his way to school pausing to get a light from a street urchin, while a gaping classmate watches them indulging in a forbidden vice. A casual depiction of underage smoking like this one in a picture book would be enough to get Les proverbes de Pierre a PG-13 rating these days and possibly launch a heated discussion on childlit-listserv…

To celebrate the very early end of our recent department wide collections move, we thought it would be fun to post about an item from the collection that’s all about moving.

Moving Day in Feather Town (1989) is a fun little picture book written by Ann M. Martin and illustrated by her father Henry Martin about two chickens, Fran and Emma, who decide to switch houses.

Ann’s name might sound familiar because she’s the author of the first 35 novels of the prolific “Baby-Sitters Club” series and other novels like the 2003 Newbery Medal awarded A Corner of the Universe. Henry Martin might be better known for his New Yorker illustrations and his long running comic strip “Good News/Bad News”. Perhaps less known, however, is that Ann happens to be a Princeton native and Henry a member of the Princeton University class of ’48.

This Princeton connection perhaps explains why the Illustrator kindly gifted his original artwork for the book to the Cotsen collection. So today I can not only show you some of the highlights of this story, I can showcase aspects of the production of the work as well.

Original artwork for the front wrapper, Item 6540798, (notice the addition of a blue background to the published work)

The story Begins with a frustrated Fran and Emma waking up in their respective homes:

Page spread of [1] and [2]

They’re both so envious of the other’s house and just sick of their boring old places!So they have they a great idea: swap houses!

And they both get excited and packed up and ready to move. But before long they both get cold feet. Unfortunately, neither has the heart to admit it to their friend. So they both decide to go through with it instead, on the day of the big parade no less:

Page [8]

And with heavy hearts, and all the items in the house packed away, each prepares her respective final act in the home:

Page [12]

But much to their mutual excitement, the two moving chicken friends get caught in the very parade they thought they’d miss. They even run into each other during the festivities:

Page spread of [18] and [19]

Page spread of [18] and [19] original artwork (Notice the absence of text and how the original boarders have been clipped during production)

Unfortunately they run into each other a little too literally and disaster strikes:

Page [20]

Page [20] original artwork

After all the commotion and confusion the pair are distraught and fear that they will never be allowed to join the parade again. Emma finally admits that she doesn’t want to move, and Fran is relieved at feeling the same. The friends part in happiness and return to their original houses:

Page [23]

Well so much for Fran and Emma’s move . . . but it all worked out in the end!

Our move to new vault space in Firestone Library, on the other hand, was much more necessary and much more efficiently handled. Not one crash!

***We’d like to thank the hard work and dedication of the CDTF team (you know who you are) and the Clancy-Cullen movers for doing such a great job.

Front board of Cotsen 15234, with design of Tom the water baby enjoying aquatic sports.

A revered professor in the UCLA English Department used to say that when a person could rattle on confidently about a book (preferably some uncontested masterpiece like Hamlet or Ulysses) without having ever cracked it open, only then could the degree of Ph.d be conferred.

Charles Kingsley’s The Water-Babies (1863) is one of those books I thought I could fake with impunity. In fact, when asked to serve on the advisory board of the Grolier 100 Books Famous in Children’s Literature project I did not confess my ignorance, knowing that Brian Alderson would wrangle The Water-Babies entry as editor of the Oxford World Classics edition. This month I was finally obliged to fetch the book from the basement, where it had been languishing for some time, and read from cover to cover–without benefit of any pictures, either.

Page 17, Cotsen 39124. Tom was a chimney sweep before being transformed into a water baby. Here he stumbles into a village school, where he sees for the first time children working at their lessons.

I’m happy to say that The Water-Babies lived up to its reputation as one of the most peculiar children’s books ever written and some of the passages about the rearing and educating of children are worth sharing. All quotations from the 1995 Oxford University Press paperback edited by Brian Alderson, of course. If you have a tender stomach, Kingsley’s indelicate sense of humor may not be your cup of tea.

Here is the hideous and not entirely benign fairy Mrs. Be-Done-By-As-You-Did, who visits the water-babies on Fridays. When pleased with them, she gives “them all sorts of nice sea-things–sea-cakes, sea-apples, sea-oranges, sea-bullseyes, sea-toffee; and to the very best of all she gave sea-ices, made out of sea-cows’ cream, which never melt under water.”

The real business of the day is to “call up all who have ill-used little children, and serve them as they served the children….And first she called up all the doctors who give little children so much physic (they were most of them old ones; for all the young ones have learnt better, all but a few army surgeons, who still fancy that a baby’s inside is much like a Scotch grenadier’s), and she set them in a row; and very rueful they looked, for they knew what was coming.

And first she pulled all their teeth out; and then she bled them all round; and then she dosed them with calomel, and jalap, and salts and senna, and brimstone and treacle; and horrible faces they made; and then she gave them a great emetic of mustard and water, and no basons; and began all over again; and that was the way she spent the morning” (Chapter V, p. 109).

This second excerpt is less savage, unless you happen to be in the children’s book publishing business. During his journey to the Other-end-of-Nowhere, the hero Tom visits a number of remarkable places.

“And first he went through Waste-paper-land, where all the stupid books lie in heaps, up hill and down dale, like leaves in a winter wood; and there he saw people digging and grubbing among them, to make worse books out of bad ones, and thrashing chaff to save the dust of it; and a very good trade they drove thereby, especially among children” (Chapter VIII, p. 157).

Last but not least is an excerpt from Tom’s sojourn in the Isle of the Tomtoddies:

“And when Tom came near it, he heard such a grumbling and grunting and growling and waiting and weeping and whining that he thought people must be wringing little pigs, or cropping puppies’ ears, or drowning kittens: but when he came nearer still, he began to hear words among the noise, which was the Tomtoddies’ song which they sing morning and evening, and all night too, to their great idol Examination–“I can’t learn my lesson: the examiner’s coming!” And that was the only song they knew….

Then he looked round for the people of the island: but instead of men, women, and children, he found nothing but turnips and radishes, beet and mangold wurzel, without a single green leaf among them, and half of them burst and decayed with toadstools growing out of them. Those which were left began crying to Tom, in half a dozen different languages at once, and all of them badly spoken, “I can’t learn my lesson,; do come help me!” And one cried, “Can you show me how to extract this square-root?” And another, “Can you tell me the distance between Lyra and Cmelopardalis?” And another, “What is the latitude and longitutde of Snooksville, in Noman’s County, Oregon, US?” (Chapter VIII, p. 165)

This post may squelch most people’s desire to read Kingsley, but perhaps a few will be curious to dip into a story dubbed by its author as “all a fairy tale and only fun and pretense,” that was one of the great children’s best-sellers of all time. It’s never too late for a Kingsley revival???

]]>https://blogs.princeton.edu/cotsen/2015/04/quotable-quotes-from-kingsleys-water-babies/feed/0Conference on Soviet Illustrated Books for Young Readers Friday-Saturday May 1-2 at Princetonhttps://blogs.princeton.edu/cotsen/2015/04/conference-on-soviet-illustrated-books-for-young-readers-friday-saturday-may-1-2-at-princeton/
https://blogs.princeton.edu/cotsen/2015/04/conference-on-soviet-illustrated-books-for-young-readers-friday-saturday-may-1-2-at-princeton/#commentsFri, 24 Apr 2015 15:01:15 +0000http://blogs.princeton.edu/cotsen/?p=2358Continue reading →]]>Cotsen is delighted to help spread the word about an international conference about Soviet illustrated children’s books!

The symposium will convene an international and interdisciplinary group of 16 scholars who work on Soviet-era Russian illustrated books for young readers.

Socialism always had major pedagogical ambitions: building a new society was also about promoting new forms of social imaginary and a new vocabulary of images. Lenin’splan of monumental propagandais well known and well researched. This symposium’s project is collaborative scholarly investigation of a less monumental but no less important and pervasive visual language developed by the socialist state for its children. Specifically, the participants will examine the interplay of text and image in illustrated books for young Soviet readers.

As a part of the general desire to translate state socialism into idioms and images accessible to the illiterate, alternatively literate, and pre-literate, children’s books visualized ideological norms and goals in a way that guaranteed easy legibility and direct appeal, without sacrificing the political identity of the message. Relying on a process of dual-media rendering, illustrated books presented the propagandistic content as a simple narrative or verse, while also casting it in images. A vehicle of ideology, an object of affection, and a product of labor, the illustrated book for the young Soviet reader became an important cultural phenomenon, despite its perceived simplicity and often minimalist techniques. Major Soviet artists and writers contributed to this genre, creating a unique assemblage of sophisticated visual formats for the propaedeutics of state socialism.

In preparation for the symposium a selection of 47 books from the Cotsen Children’s Library underwent digital imaging, and the digital surrogates were mounted as a publicly accessible collection in the Princeton University Digital Library (“Soviet Era Books for Children and Youth 1918-1938”). The 47 books were selected from the Cotsen’s holdings of approximately 1,500 Soviet-eraRussian imprints, almost 1,000 of which were published between the 1917 Revolution and the beginning of WWII. All of the selected imprints are very rare; a third of the editions included are held in only one other collection in North America, and more than a third are not held in any other North American collections.

]]>https://blogs.princeton.edu/cotsen/2015/04/conference-on-soviet-illustrated-books-for-young-readers-friday-saturday-may-1-2-at-princeton/feed/0How to Rub Down Your Pictureshttps://blogs.princeton.edu/cotsen/2015/04/how-to-rub-down-your-pictures/
https://blogs.princeton.edu/cotsen/2015/04/how-to-rub-down-your-pictures/#commentsFri, 17 Apr 2015 19:09:59 +0000http://blogs.princeton.edu/cotsen/?p=2321Continue reading →]]>Spoiler alert: this post is not about an obscure form of biblioclasty–or something even more unimaginable.

Cotsen has its fair share of picture book introductions to the ballet, many of them in the Diana R. Tillson collection. Of course there’s a copy of Noel Streatfeild’s The First Book of the Ballet (1956), complete with an inspirational story about a young girl who wants to be a ballerina, a glossary of steps, history of the ballet, and plot synopses of famous ballets (Streatfeild was also the author of the beloved 1936 Ballet Shoes).

Pages 29 and 87, Cotsen 85248. The image on the right reproduces notations for a ballet choreographed by George Balanchine.

For a quirkier approach by a certifiable balletomane, there’s Edward Gorey’s The Lavender Leotard: or Going a Lot to the New York City Ballet (1973). The page on the right includes a self-portrait of the author-illustrator in raccoon coat and tennis shoes. It was impossible to miss him on the nights he came to City Ballet.

Front board and page [1], Cotsen 152312

For those who prefer to see supple animals instead of trained classical dancers demonstrate an arabesque, entrechat or a pas de deux, there’s always author-illustrator Janis Mitchell’s The Hamster Ballet Company (1986) or Donald Elliott’s Frogs and Ballet (1979) illustrated by Clinton Arrowood.

Pages [4] and [12], Cotsen 86267

Pages 21 and 29, Cotsen 85247.

Then there is Dennis Knight’s Ballet, Patterson Blick Instant Picture Book number 5. It may be the only introduction to the ballet in the collection that is also an activity book. It comes with two leaves of “rub down instant pictures,” or forty-six Letraset transfers. For those of you with enquiring minds hungry for more information about this form of image-transfer technology, check out the webpage for SPLAT, the Society for the Preservation of Letraset Action Transfers.

In the Patterson Blick Instant Picture Book on the ballet, the sheets of Letraset transfers are divided into five sections, A-E, and each has been designed to complete a particular illustration in the text. B and D require about as much skill as filling in an outline drawing in a coloring book, while A, C, and E ask rather more of the reader. Each set of figures has to be arranged on the set of the correct ballet without any synopsis or photographs of an actual production to help visualize the scene. Perhaps this exercise was intended to engage young artists, who might yearn to design costumes or sets, rather than young dancers.

Luckily, Cotsen has two editions of Instant Picture Book number 5 and the 7th impression has all the transfers untouched on the inserted plates.

Unused plates of Letraset transfers, Cotsen 87411.

The illustrated directions for transferring the figures are printed on the rear wrapper. The earlier set of directions was illustrated with five pictures, but by the time the 7th impression was printed, the second and fourth illustrations were dropped and a cheery logo featuring a bee added in the upper left hand corner. A second good reason for keeping both copies in the collection!

Rear wrapper of Cotsen 16093 with fully illustrated instructions for transferring the designs.

Rear wrapper of the 7th impression with abbreviated instructions and logo, Cotsen 87411

Whoever filled in the scenes from the featured ballets in Cotsen’s “used” copy of Instant Picture Book Number 5 seems to have known something about classical dance. Notice the simpering White Cat (sans Puss in Boots) has been placed near the wings in the background of Tchaikovsky’s Sleeping Beauty. It could be the finale, where all the characters return for one last turn on the stage.

Page 10, Cotsen 16093

In the scene from Adolphe Adam’s Giselle, the reclining figure of Albrecht has been rotated so that he is balancing en pointe. Maybe it was an honest mistake, but I’m not so sure. It does make the romantic hero look a bit like Gene Kelly executing a jazzy move, so maybe it was done on purpose to juice things up.

Page 8, Cotsen 16093

And for the third ballet? I was expecting Stravinsky’s Petroushka. Instead it is Arthur Bliss’s Checkmate (1937), which was choreographed by Ninon de Valois, founder of the Birmingham and Royal Ballet, a work now considered a cornerstone of the modern British ballet repertory.

The ballet’s premise is that chess pieces come to life and act out human emotions (chiefly lust and blood lust) on stage. Whoever completed the scene arranged the figures so that one of the Red Knights is poised to stab a black pawn, while the Black Knight menaces his twin. The Black Queen, the femme fatale of the piece, looms ominously in the rear.

Page 13, Cotsen 16093

I wonder if Checkmate was chosen at the suggestion of the publication’s technical advisor, the great English danseur noble Michael Somes, who created the role of the Black Knight in the original production.

Publicity shot of the great British dancer, Michael Somes, the technical advisor for Instant Picture Book number 5.

Who transferred all the Letraset figures in Cotsen 16093? An older child studying ballet or an adult who was familiar with the repertory? Whoever it was, he or she seems to have taken the task fairly seriously, whether or not the scenes were composed from memories of choreography from actual productions. It’s evidence of a different kind of engagement with the book…

Olivia Bell as the Black Queen in the Australian Ballet’s production of Checkmate.

I’ve been working on processing collections material that needs to be moved out of a space that will be demolished during the renovation. Much of this material is unprocessed, otherwise under-described, or not accessioned. It’s been tedious work, but I’ve managed to blow the dust off some great items and uncover some diamonds in the rough.

One such surprisingly delightful item has been Baby’s Ball (pictured above), which I came across the other day. It’sa stuffed textile ball which includes a nursery rhyme accompanying 6 lithographed illustrations. The initial record for the item didn’t have much information. But after some careful sleuthing, Andrea and I were able to discover a lot about this Victorian baby toy.

Each illustration is accompanied by 2 descriptive lines of verse, one above and one below the image. We started our investigation when Andrea noticed that this nursery rhyme was vaguely familiar:

“Here’s a ball for baby, nice and soft and round / here’s the baby’s hammer, hear the baby pound / here’s the baby’s soldiers, standing in a row / here’s the baby’s trumpet, hear the baby blow / don’t take the ball away, to make baby cry / here’s the baby’s cradle, to rock baby by”

At first, we found several versions of the rhyme on the web, but no attribution or history. It was most commonly referenced as a finger play, a nursery rhyme or other simple song that one also performs with hand motions. Itsy Bitsy Spider is probably the most familiar example. Frustratingly, though the song appears so well known, we couldn’t locate it in any of our reference books on early nursery rhymes.

But then we finally hit pay dirt! Andrea found that the original version of the nursery rhyme is attributed to Emilie Poulsson in her book, Finger plays for nursery and kindergarten (Boston : Lothrop Publishing Company, c1893) under the title “All For Baby”. This book, it just so happens, is in the Cotsen collection:

Front cover, 86551

page 38

Page 39

Page 40

Though we were able to learn more about the ball’s verse by locating a related item from Cotsen’s own collection; this didn’t help use discover any information about the toy’s manufacture. That information came from a much less likely source: eBay.

While looking for information on our Baby’s Ball, I stumbled across an auction listing for: Antique Dated 1900 Art Fabric Mills Cloth Rag Doll BABY’S BALL Rare Uncut NR yqz. At first it didn’t look pertinent. But after scrolling down the page I realized that the item for sale was an original uncut cloth pattern sheet for the very same ball now in our collection. From this eBay listing, we were not only able to learn about the manufacturer and dates of the item, but that it was probably stitched together and stuffed at home, after the purchase of the uncut sheet.

Below, I’ve Included 2 pictures from that eBay listing for reference. But you can click on the link above to see the original listing which includes more pictures of the uncut sheet.

Uncut sheet for Baby’s Ball

Patent and manufacturer

We started with no information on a cute Victorian cloth ball and a vaguely familiar nursery rhyme. We ended up with a fully described Baby’s Ball (New York : Art Fabric Mills, 1900) which borrows (liberally) from a well-known finger play originally written by Emilie Poulsson in her book Finger plays for nursery and kindergarten, just 7 years before the pattern for the ball was patented. In short, it was a fun day at Cotsen doing research on collections material.

Purely for your edification, I’ve embedded a video performance of the finger play as well:

This video comes from the YouTube channel WCCLS Birth2Six, where a few more finger plays have also been acted out.

Above is our newly acquired set of three French jigsaw puzzles: Les Fruits Animes! (The Animated Fruits!). Though Cotsen has many jigsaw puzzles, this might be our first fruit-themed toy. Featuring numerous fruits from around the world, and even some nuts, the jigsaw puzzles gives each piece of produce a personality. I’d also like to mention that this is the best example in the Cotsen collection of figures in period dress . . . with fruits and nuts for heads.

Puzzle 1

Puzzle 2

Puzzle 3

This set of jigsaw puzzles was illustrated by A. Belloguet, and lithographed by H. Jannin at his shop on Rue des Bernardins in Paris. Though undated, other work by Belloguet and Jannin (at this particular address) point towards a date of manufacture in the mid- to late 19th century (maybe 1870s).

Some of the personifications are unfairly essentializing: such as the “savage” looking Ananas (pineapple) or the orientalized Chinois (found in puzzle 3 and 1 respectively). Meanwhile, smaller and sweeter fruit are more likely to be anthropomorphized into young girls. Most of the characters, however, seem to have been chosen for more benign associations: such as the brown-robed monk Noix de coco (coconut) with his brown husked head ( found in puzzle 3). But of course, what 19th Century French publication would be complete without a little dig at proper English ladies:

Poire d’Angleterre (the English Pear), Puzzle 1

]]>https://blogs.princeton.edu/cotsen/2015/02/les-fruits-animes/feed/1Fresh from Chinahttps://blogs.princeton.edu/cotsen/2015/02/fresh-from-china/
https://blogs.princeton.edu/cotsen/2015/02/fresh-from-china/#commentsThu, 19 Feb 2015 14:00:44 +0000http://blogs.princeton.edu/cotsen/?p=2194Continue reading →]]>In the last two years, Cotsen has received a number of generous donations of Chinese-language books and magazines. Many of these acquisitions are picture books created by Chinese writers and illustrators in the past decade. China has at least a century-long history of publishing illustrated reading materials for the enjoyment of children, but these publications were not always the sort of picture books familiar to Western audiences. Indeed, it was not until the new millennium that short-length picture books with large, full-color illustrations began to be embraced by middle-class Chinese families.

Picture Books: A Luxury Read

Brave early attempts by Chinese publishers to produce pricey children’s content are preserved in the Cotsen collection. Lacking support from robust institutional purchasers and private citizens, however, these publications maintained only a tentative presence in the Chinese children’s book market.

Miniature accordion picture books published in China between 1955 and 1965.

These tiny accordion books are one such example, published for Chinese children during the 1950s and 60s. Their small size lowered the cost of color printing, all coming in under 3 ½ inches and selling for RMB 6-10¢ each. Still, this was no trivial sum for many Chinese families. In a letter of opinion published in the Shanghai-based Wenhui Daily (文汇报) in 1958, a reader applauded the innovative folded format but commented that the price of 10¢ was “still a bit expensive” (Yang 2). To put her complaint in perspective, consider lianhuanhua (连环画), the most popular book format for older children until the mid-1980s. These lengthier illustrated story books were typically palm-sized, featuring cheap black-and-white illustrations on thin pages, and each copy could be rented for 1¢ or less at neighborhood bookstands.

The accordion style was a clever and economical design for young readers who were learning to turn book pages; it was easier for unpracticed fingers to separate double folded pages than single sheets. Obviously intended for a child’s tiny hands, the format reveals the expectation that children, however young, would read the books on their own. The majority of these miniature books contain rhyming text, and some include pinyin—the Romanized, phonetic spelling of characters—to help with pronunciation. Most of the accordion books in the Cotsen collection are well-worn, having clearly entertained young children new to the pleasure of reading.

Caption: Hearing these words the Crow was overjoyed. It stretched open its wings and admired at them, feeling as if it were indeed prettier than a peacock.

The Crow and the Fox (Cotsen 93898) is a board book published by the Juvenile and Children’s Publishing House in Shanghai in May 1978. This date is remarkably early, as the country was just stepping out of the shadow of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution (1966-1976) at the time. The book is a beautiful rendition of Aesop’s fable “The Fox and the Crow.” Color ink wash paintings by Zhan Tongxuan, a successful anime director and children’s illustrator, portray natural scenery with the elegance characteristic of traditional Chinese landscape painting. At the same time, he captures the lively personalities of animal figures with warm and playful brushstrokes. The inviting full-color visuals, brief text, and thick board pages make The Crow and the Fox suitable for the shared reading of preschoolers and their caregivers.

It is unclear what other board books Chinese children’s presses had issued at the time. What we do know is that board books were rare, and full-color picture books were not widely available in China for another two decades. The Crow and the Fox was marked at a steep price of 1.20 yuan in 1978. The publishing house was ahead of its time in producing high-quality materials when most Chinese families were not yet acquainted with early childhood literacy practices.

Imagination, Humor, and Lenient Parenting

Since the beginning of the 21st century, imported, translated titles have (re)introduced Chinese audiences to the full-color picture book. Inspired by these titles, Chinese authors and illustrators have begun creating their own works. The concept of shared reading is now continually encouraged by education scholars and parenting advocates. Cotsen’s new acquisitions reflect the latest changes and achievements in contemporary Chinese children’s literature. The new genre is nourished by a growing diversity of styles, themes, and subject matter. Particularly noticeable are the increasing number of titles intended for toddlers and preschoolers.

If the title “The Very Wonderful Little Pebble” sounds familiar, you’re probably hearing echoes of Eric Carle’s The Very Hungry Caterpillar. The title is not the only part of the book that bears Carle’s influence. Every other page has a pebble-shaped hole, a stable element that introduces surprising visual transformations throughout the book. Each hollow pebble takes its color from the image on the next page, seen through the cut-out. As you turn the page and reveal the rest of the image, the gray pebble becomes the body of a gray mouse; the bright yellow pebble becomes the juicy body of an Asian pear; and so on. The text first invites the reader to observe the little pebble and its color and then asks for a guess of what the pebble’s next transformation will be. Each new object is then described in short and joyful rhymes. The use of repetition and rhymes, the invitation to participate in the guessing game, the teaching of color and object names, the fun of being surprised by the humble pebble’s many transformations, and not to mention the immense satisfaction that will soon come to a toddler from getting the answers right within a few repeated readings make The Very Wonderful Little Pebble an enjoyable picture book for preschoolers.

How terribly boring would it be if there were no humor in children’s books? Humor contributed to the immense popularity of many Chinese children’s stories published in the second half of the twentieth century, works which were otherwise didactic, nationalistic, and Communist. Humor continues to characterize contemporary Chinese picture books, which have been considerably de-politicized. In Who Took a Bite of My Pancake (Cotsen 154141), published in 2013, a good-natured piglet wakes to find a bite missing from his freshly made pancake. He begins asking around to identify the culprit. In order to prove their innocence, the suspect animals (a bird, a rabbit, a fox, etc.) take defiant bites from the pancake, so that their bite-marks can be compared to the first bite. One by one, the animals demonstrate that the first bite, which was shaped like a half-moon, could not possibly have been left by their beaks or teeth. The piglet resigns himself to enjoying what little is left of his pancake, still wondering who did it. On the last page, more perceptive readers will notice that the only bite that matches the first one is the piglet’s own. Who Took a Bite is a definite giggle-inducer. Toddlers will relish being the wiser as the piglet takes on his inevitably fruitless investigation. This flattering feeling of wisdom is not to be taken for granted at an age when everyone else in your life seems to know more than you do.

In Is It Morning (Cotsen 154239), we meet a young rooster on the eve of his first cock-a-doodle-doo duty. Too excited to fall asleep, he stays up lest he miss the first sign of dawn. Over the course of the night, he mistakes the glow of fireflies, the sparks of fireworks, the radiance of a shooting star, and the glare of headlights for the break of day. After so many false alarms, he is exhausted. When dawn finally does arrive, as you might have guessed, our protagonist is fast asleep.

Is It Morning is part of a 20-volume toddlers’ series titled I Have Never Thought of That (没想到: 婴儿创意图画书) (2014), which intends to teach parenting skills in addition to amuse children. Each volume contains a one-page guide to sharing the book with a child reader, often spelling out the “moral” of the story for adult caregivers. These morals break away from traditional values such as self-constraint, modesty, and perseverance, and encourage self-esteem and assertiveness in children. Overall, they advocate a parenting attitude that is more tolerant and sympathetic to children. The shared-reading guide for Is It Morning points out that it is okay to make mistakes, especially on your first try, promoting a more positive view of failure. As the guide suggests, the young rooster will be able to respond to teasing and laughter by saying, “Yes, I have overslept and missed my crow duty, but last night I saw the dance of fireflies, beautiful explosions of fireworks, and the shining journey of a shooting star.”

In another title I Won’t (Cotsen 154239), the shared-reading guide warns that it is unhealthy for children to bottle up their feelings and remain constantly obedient, a message that is alien to traditional Chinese culture. The guide suggests that such repressive parenting strategies have the potential to cause estrangement in the long run. In I Won’t, a little girl finds a voice and an emotional outlet through “disobedient” animals who are not afraid of saying “no” to commands. Revolutionary as the message sounds, it reflects a shift of what children are most valued for–from being a source of material returns to that of emotional rewards.

Authors and Illustrators Renewed

A sign of vitality in the world of Chinese picture books is the even distribution of authors along the age spectrum. These new picture book titles are created by a range of writers and illustrators, including Wang Xiaoming (王晓明, born in 1945), a nominee for the 2004 Hans Christian Andersen Award for illustration, and a young, accidental author, Shao Yinjie ( born in the late 1990s). Shao and his mother got the idea for their picture book when he became disgruntled about eating “the same old breakfast” yet again (Shao).

Zhong Yu (born in 1985) won a picture book award for her drawings of a girl’s imaginative play with a cardboard box. The girl’s resourcefulness and creative mind transform the box into an airplane up in the sky one minute and a fancy restaurant dining table the next. She might be able to offer a few tips to the contestants in the annual Cardboard Canoe Race at Princeton, wouldn’t you say?

Caption: [If you like grass for breakfast,] then you might be an ox, or a sheep, or a horse, or an elephant.What Do You Like for Breakfast? (早餐, 你喜欢吃什么?), written by Yin Xiuhua (殷秀华) and Shao Yinjie (邵殷杰); illustrated by Zhou Xiang (周翔). Nanjing, 201-. (Cotsen 154138)

What Do You Like for Breakfast? (Cotsen 154138) plays with the food habits of animals, repeating the pattern “If you like X (e.g. fish) for breakfast, then you might be a Y (e.g. cat)” throughout. It also builds upon the deep-seated assumption that children naturally identify themselves with animals, or perhaps upon adults’ subconscious association of children with animals and lesser humans. The book seamlessly switches from describing various animals to describing a toddler at the end: “If you like bread, egg, and milk for breakfast, then you might be a human child.” If these foods are not the “authentic” Chinese breakfast you’d expect, it is worth knowing that they are common on the breakfast tables of contemporary urban Chinese families, a reflection of constantly changing and partially Westernized lifestyles in the country.

The Chinese picture book industry faces some of the same old hurdles it did more than half a century ago. Lacking the backing of strong institutional purchasers, most children’s books clearly rely on individual buyers and are kept at the low price of 8-10 yuan (under $2 USD). Nearly all have been issued in softback edition alone and are not ideal for a public library to collect and shelve. We can only hope that Chinese picture books are here to stay this time, bringing color, joy, and useful knowledge to children in 21st century China, as well as enriching children’s literature for the whole world.

Over her long career, Mary Martha Sherwood typically wrote for four or five hours each day. Although she is best known for two novels for children–The History of Little Henry and His Bearer (1814) and The History of the Fairchild Family (1818)–she also produced penny pamphlets, adaptations of eighteenth-century children’s classics like Sarah Fielding’s The Governess, and textbooks for use in the school she and her husband ran after their return from India in 1818. Even with the income from the school, the Sherwood family was strapped for cash, so she turned out around a hundred tracts over the next twelve years to make extra money.

The Cotsen Children’s Library has a fascinating manuscript from this period of her life: the annotated proofs for a tract about a notorious murder that had taken place in the tiny village of Oddingley, Worcestershire on Midsummer’s Day 1806 that went unsolved until 1830.

Cotsen 40111

The lurid story was a quintessential English crime set in a beautiful, remote village seething with class resentment. The cast of characters included a grasping vicar, a shady man of all work, some disgruntled farmers, and the dapper old soldier who was the local magistrate. Add two brutal killings and a shallow grave in a ramshackle barn and voila, a perfect candidate for Masterpiece Mystery…

When the murdered murderer’s body was finally found, Mrs. Sherwood, a Worcestershire native herself, picked up her pen to write about this real-life crime. The why is more complicated than it might first appear. To a devout Evangelical Christian like Sherwood, the way the perpetrators of the crime was discovered after twenty-four years fulfilled Isaiah XXIX.15: “ Woe unto them that seek deep to hide their counsel from the Lord, and their works are in the dark, and they say, “Who seeth us? Who knoweth us?”

A personal connection to the sordid affair may also explain her eagerness to drive home the lesson that “No man can conceal what Providence willeth to bring to the light.” Her brother John Marten Butt was drawn into the case as Oddingley’s pastor: he was the successor of the murdered clergyman George Parker. During his tenure in Oddingley, Butt came to realize that his parishioners had known all along the identity of the perpetrators and felt no remorse at their never having been brought to justice. The villagers’ attitudes so profoundly disturbed Butt that he eventually left his living for another.

Mrs. Sherwood must have written the text almost immediately after the January trial. On February 18, 1830, her publisher, Edward Houlston, mailed the proof of the tract now in the Cotsen collection to her in Worcester from Wellington, Salop (Shropshire), about forty five miles away.

Google Maps. (2015).

To save time and money on postage, he wrote her a letter, asking how many copies she wanted and if he might enclose copies in her parcel for delivery to the Worcester booksellers. In the closing, he asked if she could write six more tracts for the new series at her earliest convenience, adding that two would suffice at present.

Mr. Houlston’s letter to Mrs. Sherwood

After making changes on pages 6, 7, 8, 10, 11, 16, and 18, Mrs. Sherwood wrote her reply to Houlston on the blank side of the sheet.

Page 6, with Mrs. Sherwood’s corrections

Page 10, with Mrs. Sherwood’s corrections

She said, “I had written a letter to you which I shall not send requesting you to be very quick in sending ‘The Oddingley Murder’ as people know I have written it and are enquiring for it.” She directed him to send her four copies of the French-language translation of Little Henry and His Bearer, six of “The Mourning Queen,” a dozen “The Oddingley Murders,” and an unspecified number of a new tract for the booksellers. She closed (a bit tartly) with “I will write some tracts when I can find time—but time is a very scarce commodity.”

On back of proof, Mrs. Sherwood’s response to Mr. Houlston.

The sheet was folded up for a second time and mailed to Houlston on February the 20th. Presumably it retraveled those forty-five miles to Wellington within twenty-four hours. The speed of the British postal service during the nineteenth century is well known, but this corrected proof is testimony to its efficiency. Of course, the service then was slow compared to what we have come to take for granted via the Internet, but this annotated proof is a vivid reminder that Mrs. Sherwood could never have written as much as she did without a superb communications infrastructure.

Mr. Houlston’s address.

And thanks to our paper conservator, Ted Stanley, for restoring the proof of this tract, which was found in rather parlous condition in the Wall of Books some months ago.

Above is a classic example of a modern Nigerian thorn carving from the early 1990’s. Made principally by the Yoruba people since the 30’s, these miniature folk art pieces (sometimes more appropriately referred to as “tourist art” depending on their intended market) usually feature scenes and aspects of everyday Nigerian life. This particular carving depicts a classroom scene where diligent pupils are learning their ABC’s.

The thorns used for these carvings come from 2 varieties of trees: the ata tree and the egungun tree. The thorns grow up to 5 inches in length and their relative suppleness makes for easier carving. They come in three colors: cream, rose, and brown; all three of which are exhibited in our little classroom scene. Though the carving above is mostly composed of recycled wood, the thorn wood provides the color and life of the piece.

Classroom scenes of all sorts are a collection interest of our benefactor Lloyd E. Cotsen. We find them all over the collection, in all sorts of mediums. For the occasion of Mr. Cotsen’s 75th birthday we published Readers in the Cotsen Children’s Library (Princeton : Cotsen Children’s Library, 2005). This accordion style pamphlet (available here in the gallery) included one such memorable classroom scene from our collection:

page 22, reproduction of Oranges and lemons : a book of pictures and stories for children (Cotsen 22656, page 18)

If your thirst for classroom related material is still unsatiated, I’d recommend Jeff Barton’s blog post: School Days in Children’s Books about depictions of school scenes from 18th and 19th Century children’s books.

Above is a hand-operated mechanical magic lantern slide. We might describe it as “kaleidoscopic” but it’s technically not a kaleidoscope, It’s a chromatrope. The device doesn’t contain a cylinder with mirrors that reflect an image in order to create the changing patterns. Instead, the slide is in fact 2 painted slides. As one turns the brass and wood handle, the brass rim rotates the 2 slides in opposite directions creating repeating designs.

Many companies were creating mechanical magic lantern slides it the late 19th Century and early 20th Century. Judging by its condition, our chromatrope slide was probably made in the 20th Century, but it reveals no indication of its manufacturer.

Regardless of who made it, our mechanical slide is a great example of a chromatrope with a very simple but stunning visual pattern.

Nürnberger Puppenstubenspielbuch is not only a mouthful of German, it’s also the title of a wonderful slot book by Else Wenz-Viëtor. Literally translated as: Nuremberg dollhouse game book, the three books pictured above are consecutive editions (auflage in German) three, four, and five; all published in the early 1920’s.

Slot books (sometimes, unfortunately, referred to as “slotty books” in England) are part doll house and part book. While they are clearly a codex, pages or spreads feature illustrated backgrounds (often of a domestic nature) with little or no text. Each book is accompanied by any number of cut-out figures which can be fit into slots on the pages. These figures are often people and various objects which can be fit into the book in order to, by the powers of the user’s imagination, form scenes or narratives about the figures and their background environment. Essentially then, slot books serve as a kind of two dimensional (and much more transportable) doll house.

Nürnberger Puppenstubenspielbuch features six household scenes, each occupying their own double page spread. The book runs through a middle class German household, from the front hallway, to a parlor, a bedroom, a nursery, the kitchen, and the backyard garden.

The parlor, spread 2

The nursery, spread 4

In addition to the obvious slots necessarily present in any slot book, Nürnberger also includes various flaps. Here, figures can be places behind doors, in ovens, in cabinets, etc. Since these flaps need to be manipulated in order for the figures behind them to be revealed, this kind of interaction allows for a sense of motion and time to be introduced into a particular scene.

The door flap and the oven door flap in the parlor, spread 2

We recently received a reference question regarding the figure cut-outs that belong to the different editions (sparking this blog post in the first place). As it turns out, there are some slight cosmetic differences between the three editions that we have here at Cotsen.

As you can tell from the picture at top, the fourth edition has a blue spine while editions three and five have red spines. Since this blue spine is so much worse for wear than the other contemporary editions, it might indicate that the publisher attempted to save money by cutting a corner in production. But with our sample size so small, we can’t be sure about the spine color or material of different editions or printings.

The editions have different figures as well. The varying number of figures between our different copies, however, has more to do with time than it does with production choices. Many cut-outs have simply been lost or damaged with use.

All the figures with edition 3, Cotsen 2333

All the figures with edition 4, Cotsen 1616

All the figures with edition 5, Cotsen 14315

As you can tell by comparing the pictures, some of the surviving figures from the third edition do look different from the later two editions. The little girl, the housekeeper, and the nanny have a different appearance.

While the fourth and fifth editions overlap in all but a few extra outfits and objects (though light and time have affected the figures differently), you’ll probably notice that the fifth edition includes some extra guests in the bottom left of the picture. These figures are from a different slot book and must have been introduced by a former owner. Besides the obvious coloring differences, they are made of much thinner paper.

Figures from other sources, replacements, and custom cut-outs were often introduced by savvy children more interested in play than collection. As a result, those who do collect slot books often find an array of outside material.

Now, with the technical exposition out of the way, what blog post about slot books would be complete without a little fun scene making?

Young Hans loses control of the parlor while babysitting his sister Helga.

Here little Odetta fails at quietly playing tea with her dolly and wakes the babes in the nursery.

With such a variety of backgrounds and figures slot books could potentially provide hours of imagination and fun. I, at least, had some fun making my own scenes and I hope you enjoyed learning about Nürnberger Puppenstubenspielbuch.

]]>https://blogs.princeton.edu/cotsen/2015/01/nu%cc%88rnberger-puppenstubenspielbuch-a-german-slot-book-in-3-editions/feed/2A Magic Lantern Showhttps://blogs.princeton.edu/cotsen/2015/01/a-magic-lantern-show/
https://blogs.princeton.edu/cotsen/2015/01/a-magic-lantern-show/#commentsFri, 16 Jan 2015 14:48:00 +0000http://blogs.princeton.edu/cotsen/?p=2037Continue reading →]]>A few weeks ago our friends Isabella Palowitch and her daughter Alessia Arregui came to visit for a special demonstration. Isabella is the graphic designer behind Artisa LLC here in Princeton and she has done beautiful designs for Cotsen events and our virtual exhibits. Alessia is a senior at Rhode Island School of Design working on sculpture with glass materials.

The pair expressed interest in seeing optical material for some out-of-the-box inspiration. Since Cotsen has a large collection of magic lanterns and accompanying slides, we gathered some of this material for a little show and tell.

Magic lanterns are precursors to modern projectors. Invented as early as the 17th Century (and popular into the early 20th Century), magic lanterns magnify and project hand painted images on glass slides. With a light source behind the slide and a lens in front, the slides are loading in upside down and backwards, since the lens flips the image.

The above slide was able to fit into the magic lantern’s duel loading wooden frame (this kind of slide frame allows for simple animation by quickly moving between 2 slides). From a collection of German fairy tale slides called Im Reiche der Märchen (In the Realm of Fairy tales), this particular slide is a scene from the end of Rotkäppchen (Little Red Riding Hood) with the defeated wolf in the foreground. The caption at the bottom reads: “Die Grossmutter stärckt sich mit Kuchen und Wein” (The grandmother is strengthened with cake and wine).

Though it’s not the clearest projection, considering that the equipment is nearly 150 years old I think it comes out pretty well.

A closer (and a little clearer) shot of the projected image.

Thanks again to Isabella and Alessia for stopping by. I think we all enjoyed the rare chance of projecting a little piece of the past.

If you want to know more about magic lanterns (including related material and book illustrations) check out our virtual exhibition on the main Cotsen website: Magic Lantern.

This behemoth box arrived just before the holidays and we were very excited to unpack what was inside (it almost felt like an early Christmas).

After some very careful maneuvers and masterful positioning (where we just managed to fit the object past the wooden ceiling panel above the gallery entryway) our new installation was ready for unveiling. . .

Still can’t guess what it is?

This 104″ x 38″ polished maple and Plexiglas structure was designed and fabricated by Judson Beaumont and his company Straight Line Designs. Jud is a great friend of ours who also happens to have designed much of Bookscape (the current incarnation of the Cotsen Gallery).

But you’re probably still wondering what it is!

Well, it’s a display case of course! And what goes inside is just as unique and impressive as the case it is housed in. . .

what were you expecting?

A Maurice Sendak clock!

The clock is a 94″ x 30″ painted board, canvas, and wood stage prop from the Frank Corsaro production of Maurice Ravel’s “L’Heure espagnol” at the 1987 Glyndebourne Opera Festival in England. Maurice Sendak designed and supervised the creation of this prop (and one other similar clock), costumes, and stage set for this performance. Our clock includes a removable back panel so that an actor can slip into the clock itself. One can open not only the clock-face but the face on the clock as well (the one with the nose that is).

Slightly hidden in our conference room since the end of August, it was finally time for the clock to be united with its new permanent home in the front of the Cotsen gallery.

After some more careful maneuvers and masterful positioning the clock and its case were set in place.

With the new installation ready we went about setting up the rest of the gallery entryway.

Since our display table no longer fits in its old place, we brought out another Beaumont original to serve as our new “table”:

The accompanying books are made of wood, with a few displaying comical spine titles, just like the “library” in the gallery.

With the new and wonderful installation of the Sendak clock and case, along with the other accompanying objects, the entryway has never looked so good! Sendak and Beaumont are a perfect fit!

A special thanks to Jud and his daughter Shelby for visiting from Vancouver in order to oversee the installation our newest gallery item.

]]>https://blogs.princeton.edu/cotsen/2015/01/big-changes-in-the-gallery-entryway/feed/0A Christmas Box, or, a Small Holiday Mystery…https://blogs.princeton.edu/cotsen/2014/12/a-christmas-box-or-a-small-christmas-mystery/
https://blogs.princeton.edu/cotsen/2014/12/a-christmas-box-or-a-small-christmas-mystery/#commentsTue, 23 Dec 2014 22:00:16 +0000http://blogs.princeton.edu/cotsen/?p=1961Continue reading →]]>Some Early Holiday Books for Children Published by the Baldwins

Book publishers frequently reissue a variety of new versions of books around the holidays, many in “special holiday editions” or versions meant to make them suitable as gifts. Sometimes, these are indeed new books, but often they’re just reissues of prior editions, with colorful new covers or dust-jackets, designed to catch the eye of someone looking for a entertaining but educational gift. This is especially true of many children’s books. What adult hasn’t spent time looking for a last-minute gift or stocking-stuffer for a child?

We tend to think of this repurposing of content as a modern phenomenon—after all, isn’t this the era of marketing and targeted sales? But—as in many cases—children’s booksellers seemed to have caught on to this idea long ago—indeed, in the eighteenth century they seem to have been one of the early innovators of this practice.

In much the same spirit of entrepreneurial innovation, bookselling was perhaps the first trade to realize that the packaging for item—that is, books’ covers or paper wrappers—could be a marketing tool for helping attract purchasers. Books, which had been offered for sale unbound or in plain bindings or paper wrappers, were sold in increasingly attractive publisher’s bindings, some illustrated, some colored, and some in eye-catching materials. Dutch gilt paper for instance, was used by Thomas Boreman and John Newbery to bind up entertaining books for young readers as a way of distinguishing them from school books or more serious titles.

The three R. Baldwin editions (arranged from earliest to latest, left to right, in their appealing (but quite different) Dutch gilt paper wrappers. (Cotsen New Acquisition)

Title page of A Christmas Box, (R. Baldwin, [after 1754]) (Cotsen new acquisition)

Cataloging several editions of a previously unrecorded eighteenth century children’s book brought home the idea of repurposing content to me. The first book I cataloged announced that it was a Christmas book in its title: A Christmas Box. The full title, as it appears on the title page is: A Christmass Box, or, Little Polite Tales, Fables, Riddles, Stories, Letters, Epitaphs, &c.: in Easy Prose and Verse, with Other Lessons of Morality Equally Instructive & Entertaining for Little Masters and Misses: Adorned with Sculptures. Quite a mouthful, compared to the current practice of keeping titles to single words. (Note: “Christmass,” which I first thought must be a typo, turns out to be an early variation on the spelling, more widely used in the sixteenth-and seventeenth-century, but clearly still in use in the mid-eighteenth century. By the way, a “Christmas box” was a small clay container with a slot like a piggy bank and at the end of the year servants went around with them collecting tips from employers. The term could also be used in the eighteenth century as a synonym for any present given during the extended Christmas holidays).

As the subtitle suggests, the book is miscellany of fables, tales, riddles, short Bible stories, short poems, precepts, and epitaphs. This broad range of material was consistent with prevailing eighteenth-century views that an anthology ought to mix up serious and humorous materials as a way of catching and holding the interest of children, so they might learn something useful from their pleasure reading. It’s still fairly typical of gift books.

But this book posed some small mysteries for a cataloger. When was it published? (It’s undated, as the image of the title page shows.) Also, who was the publisher “R. Baldwin”? There several booksellers and printers using the name “R. Baldwin” at about the same time. Cotsen Library has no other book titled Christmas Box by Baldwin, nor did I find one in the WorldCat, the world-wide combined library catalog. With so little information and no other similarly-titled book to compare, the plot thickened…

But the long alternate title turned out to be an important clue. And Cotsen doeshave another Baldwin publication—in fact two copies of one—titled Little Polite Tales, Fables Riddles, Stories, Letters, Epitaphs, &c. Looking inside these books, I quickly realized that all three books had the samecontent, and the same number of pages (128, plus two leaves of engraved plates, the frontispiece illustration and the title page). Only the title pages were different—along with some other, relatively minor printing variations; take a look at the variations in the woodcut headpieces and the decorative capital letter “T” at the first selection in each book.

First page of text in all three books: actual text is the same, but note how all three have different woodcut headpiece ornaments and different printer’s device decorations around the initial “T,” among other smaller changes–suggesting different editions of similar content.

Only one book was dated, the 1751 edition of Little Polite Tales. Was it the first one printed, or was one of the other books printed first? How to tell? One potential clue—or point of confusion—seemed to be in the variation in the publisher’s name, “R. Baldwin, Jr.” (on both Cotsen copies of Little Polite Tales), as opposed to “R. Baldwin” (on the Christmas Box). But was this the same person or two different people, perhaps a father and son? (Publishing in this era was often a family affair.) To make things more confusing, there were at least fiveR. Baldwins issuing books in London at this time, three Richards and two Roberts, two brothers and their three sons!

To make a long story short, it seems that “R. Baldwin, Jr” was Richard Baldwin, 1724-1770, son of Richard, brother of Robert, and both nephew and cousin of two Roberts. He first issued books under the name “R. Baldwin, Jr.” to distinguish himself from his father, but gradually dropped the “Jr.” once he became more established himself; the last book he issued as “R. Baldwin, Jr.” was in 1754.¹

What does all this mean in terms of dating our books? Remember, one copy of Little Polite Tales was dated 1751. So the other copy of Little Polite Tales, the one with nodate, seems likely to have been issued sometime between 1751 and 1754—that is, between the date of the first (dated) edition and the date when Richard Baldwin dropped the “Jr.” from his imprint. This conclusion seems supported by an interesting change to the title page of this undated edition, the addition of the text: “A Pretty Present as a Christmas Box, or New Year’s Gift.” This suggests the original Little Polite Tales was reissued as a holiday gift book. (Perhaps the printing of the frontispiece and title page in red ink was meant as a festive touch?)

The book titled Christmas Box, then, must date from sometime after 1754, since Baldwin identified himself just as “R. Baldwin.” Cotsen’s copy of this book also has an inscription dated “1774,” so we can use 1774 as the last possible date the book could have been issued. So the Christmas Box seems to date from between 1754 and 1774 and it is apparently the lastof the three books to be published.

Inscription, dated Jan, 7, 1774, in A Christmas Box, which suggests 1774 as a terminal date for publication: thus a date of [between 1754 & 1774]. The January 7 inscription also suggests that this book was indeed given to Jos. Phillips as a Christmas or New Year’s holiday book.

This sequence of publication also makes sense, I think, in terms of how the title of the book seems to have evolved: 1) Little Polite Tales; 2: Little Polite Tales…A Christmas Box…; 3) A Christmas Box. The idea that Baldwin took a “regular” book and reissued it at least twice seems to make sense too, in terms of the general publishing “model” I talked about at the beginning of this piece—it seems unlikely that Baldwin took a Christmas book and reissued it as a non-seasonal piece (but technically, that remains a possibility).

And what sort of Christmas delights could be expected by the “masters and misses” to whom Baldwin dedicated each version of his book? “A Short Essay on the Nature and Beauty of Fable,” and “An Alphabet in Verse, containing Rules of Life,” lead off the book, followed by fables each followed by an explicitly didactic moral “application.” Next come the riddles, and after them, the Bible stories, such as “A History of the Creation of the World, and the Fall of Man,” “The History of Cain and Abel” (accompanied by a woodcut of Cain braining Abel with a huge club), and “ The History of Daniel in the Lion’s Den.” Following these Bible stories, comes the seven-page “Filial Ingratitude: the Ancient History of King Lear and his Three Daughters,” which at least follows the eighteenth-century editors’ practice of having Lear and Cordelia survive “for some years afterwards,” instead of meeting the tragic ends Shakespeare provided. (Dr. Johnson, for one, thought the original ending of King Lear was just too horrific for adults, not to mention for children.)

Concluding all three of the “Christmas Box” books and its kin are “serious” and “humorous” epitaphs, the last reading:

An Humorous Epitaph

On Little Stephen, a noted fiddler, in the Country of Suffolk.
Stephen and Time
Are how both even;
Stephen beat Time,
And Time beat Stephen.

So, while these eighteenth-century books are quite different from earlier religious instruction, primers, and alphabet catechisms aimed at “miniature adults,” as they’re sometimes termed, publishers clearly had quite a different idea of what an “instructive and entertaining book for little masters and misses” was than we have now.

And on that note, Cotsen Library wishes all of you–children and grown-ups alike–a very Merry Christmas!

]]>https://blogs.princeton.edu/cotsen/2014/12/a-christmas-box-or-a-small-christmas-mystery/feed/0Fantasia on the Theme of Christmas Book Shopping Starring John Newberyhttps://blogs.princeton.edu/cotsen/2014/12/the-pre-history-of-christmas-book-shopping-2/
https://blogs.princeton.edu/cotsen/2014/12/the-pre-history-of-christmas-book-shopping-2/#commentsThu, 18 Dec 2014 14:28:57 +0000http://blogs.princeton.edu/cotsen/?p=1938Continue reading →]]>The Christmas season is most wonderful time of the year to pay tribute to the children’s bookseller and this one starts with..

John Newbery who made a fortune selling Dr. James’ fever powder, a patent medicine to which references were strategically planted in his juvenile books.

One of Newbery’s diabolically clever publishing projects for the children’s market was to create a series of books that were suitable for purchase as presents for any major holiday, whether Christmas, New Year’s, Twelfth Night, Valentine’s Day, Easter, and Whitsuntide. Could this series been the answer to the prayers of every brother, sister, papa, mama, uncle, aunt, godfather and godmother who needed a present at the last minute? Thanks to Newbery, the philanthropic bookseller of St. Paul’s Church-Yard, perukes, product placement, and plum pudding go together like Macy’s, Santa, and Sedaris.

Digression on Critics which is optional Reading

Children’s literature critics have declared themselves shocked, shocked, at the unmistakable stench of commercial instincts burbling up in Newbery juveniles, even though it ought to be as plain as the nose on Rudolph’s muzzle that there would be no children’s literature as we know it if John Newbery had not created needs that could only be gratified on his premises.

A handful of modern writers have taken it upon themselves to explain to children the debt of gratitude they owe Mr. Newbery as the namesake of the American Library Association’s annual award for the best American work written for children. There is Josephine Blackstock’s Songs of Sixpence: A Story about John Newbery (1955) and Russell Roberts’ John Newbery and the Story of the Newbery Medal (2003). The latest entry in the field is Shirley Granahan’s John Newbery: The Father of Children’s Literature (2009).

For some reason, John Newbery (of whom no portraits survive) always bears a striking resemblance to Ben Franklin. Front board, Songs of Sixpence: A Story about John Newbery (New York: Follett, 1955), (Private collection)

Quite by accident, I discovered in the Cotsen stacks what appears to be the earliest children’s book about John Newbery: A Book for Jennifer (1940) by Alice Dalgleish, founding editor of Scribner & Sons Children’s Book Division and author of well-regarded historical novels for children. It was illustrated by Katharine Milhous, who is perhaps best known for the murals she painted for the Pennsylvania WPA and The Egg Tree, the picture book about Pennsylvania Dutch Easter traditions that won the 1950 Caldecott Medal.

If you are familiar with the dark urban landscape of Leon Garfield’s historical fiction set in the eighteenth century, the recreation of Dr. Johnson’s London by Dalgleish and Milhous in A Book for Jennifer is a bit prim and dull. Milhous’s full-page color plates are paired with the line art based on cuts in eighteenth-century children’s books from the collection of Wilbur Macy Stone, which Dalgleish consulted so that her readers would have some idea of what Jennifer’s books actually looked like.

A Digression which only Antiquarians and Bibliophiles may Appreciate…

Dalgleish did not give credits to the actual sources of the illustrations she used, but I can vouch that only one or two were reproduced from actual Newbery titles. There is one howler: the cut that is identified as a picture of John Newbery’s store front is actually an early nineteenth-century one, the Juvenile Library of William Godwin, which can be identified by the sculpture of Aesop over the door.

True to the spirit of her subject, Dalgleish has repackaged the Newbery myth of enlightened entrepreneurship as a Christmas book for American youngsters about a little girl named Jennifer getting not one, but two Newbery books as presents. With that snow coming down, shouldn’t someone break into a song?

Page 2, (New York : Scribner, 1941), A Book for Jennifer, (Cotsen 7267)

Here is the scene where Jennifer’s doting godmother gives her a copy of The Important Pocket-Book. Her godmother is about to leave for America and she would like Jennifer to track her good and bad deeds and present the diary for inspection upon her return to England. Jennifer looks underwhelmed by this thoughtful and useful gift, which was an actual Newbery publication that is now of legendary rarity.

Pages 11, A Book for Jennifer

When Jennifer falls ill on Christmas day, her two brothers are driven down to Newbery’s shop to find something to cheer her up while confined to quarters until the plum pudding is ready for flaming. Tempted by John-the-Giant-Killer’s Food for the Mind, a collection of riddles which the boys mistake for a version of the famous gory English folk tale, they think better of their first choice and unselfishly select The History of Goody Two-Shoes as perfect for girls, who should not be upset by anything too stimulating (apparently they missed the bit where that the heroine’s father dies because he didn’t get a dose of Dr. James’ Fever Powder in time). Newbery himself makes a cameo appearance.

Page 25, A Book for Jennifer

“Quaint” was the verdict of the anonymous reviewer in Kirkus.

A final Digression for Christmas Shoppers that should not be Skipped

I would be doing my gentle readers a disservice if this tribute to the great-grandaddy of children’s booksellers did not close with a puff for three marvelous independent booksellers in the Princeton area, who could give the old man some stiff competition. To wit…

The Bear and the Books on Broad Street in Hopewell has over 4000 titles lovingly and knowledgably selected by Bobbie Fishman, who was the long-time children’s book buyer at Micawber’s and Labyrinth before going out on her own.

Jazam’s on Palmer Square has a small but choice selection of books—many signed by the authors or illustrators—complementing with all the wonderful toys and games.

Labyrinth Books on Nassau Street has a cozy nook in the back with everything from board books to YA fiction. Buyer Annie Farrell has real bookish creds as the daughter of librarian and a rare books curator and a mother of two.

Yes, it’s supposed to be more convenient and cheaper to order from Amazon, but why not visit stores where people who are passionate about children’s literature want to put the best of the best in hands of their customers’ children? In Princeton we are really lucky to have easy access a truly priceless resource, great children’s booksellers…

]]>https://blogs.princeton.edu/cotsen/2014/12/the-pre-history-of-christmas-book-shopping-2/feed/0Martin Engelbrecht’s Kleines Bilder-Cabinet: A Gift to Cotsen from Pamela K. Harerhttps://blogs.princeton.edu/cotsen/2014/12/martin-engelbrechts-kleines-bilder-cabinet-a-gift-to-cotsen-from-pamela-k-harer/
https://blogs.princeton.edu/cotsen/2014/12/martin-engelbrechts-kleines-bilder-cabinet-a-gift-to-cotsen-from-pamela-k-harer/#commentsThu, 11 Dec 2014 21:52:45 +0000http://blogs.princeton.edu/cotsen/?p=1889Continue reading →]]>Cotsen’s relationship with Pamela K. Harer, the noted children’s book collector, dates back to the late 1990s, when she was still practicing law in Southern California. As a collector, Pamela was attracted to English-language material from the 19th and 20th centuries, but was also intrigued by propaganda produced for the young between the two World Wars and early Soviet picture books as well.

Pamela’s first gift to Cotsen comprised over fifty eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century English, American, and French books and it was described in the “New and Notable” in the Autumn 2000 Princeton University Library Chronicle. When downsizing for a move to Seattle in 2004, Pamela presented Cotsen with a second big stash, this time illustrated pamphlets mostly published by the Dean firm. Just recently Cotsen Rare Book Cataloger Jeff Barton used some of them as the basis for a lecture on the toy book’s early history at the Children’s Books History Society May 2014 study day.

Educational books were not Pamela’s thing per se, but there were some choice hornbooks, a copy of the Mohawk Primer, and two editions of the Orbis Sensualium Pictus in the first sale catalog of her collection sold at PBA Galleries November 6th of this year. Luckily not everything in Pamela’s collection will go to the rooms: she held back the Thomas Malin Rodgers copy of the Kleines Bilder-Cabinet zu Erlernüng Vier Sprachen (ca. 1740?) she had acquired at Bonham’s in 2012. This book consists of one hundred leaves of engraved plates, each with nine hand-colored images arranged in three rows of three. This wonderful surprise was presented to Cotsen this fall. Like Pamela’s previous two gifts, this had also been selected with the collection’s strengths in mind. It was both touching and impressive that she knew about Cotsen’s cache of early modern texts for teaching foreign languages.

The book’s publisher was Martin Engelbrecht (1684-1756), one of the most important engravers working in the Bavarian city of Augsburg, which was a major center for print production during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Unfortunately no one took credit for the book’s contents or signed the illustrations. Children’s book collectors associate Engelbrecht with the charming engraved dioramas or miniature theaters, that are the forerunners of the nineteenth-century toy theater the produced from the 1730s on. The standard reference books on 18th century German-language children’s books don’t offer much evidence that Engelbrecht was a major player in the juvenile book market, so this is a wonderful addition to Cotsen’s Engelbrecht collection, which consists of this illustrated polyglot school book, a small section of the fancy prints, and over twenty examples of the dioramas.

Engelbrecht’s Kleines Bilder-Cabinet is a genuinely rare book, as is so often the case with school books. A quick search revealed that it survives in a copy of the forty-seven-leaf 1708 edition in the Berlin Staatsbibliothek and an undated one with ninety leaves in the Koninklijke Bibliotheek in the Hague. Cotsen has an uncolored, undated copy of the one hundred leaves of plates in a somewhat later binding. Someone else is welcome to solve the little mystery I uncovered about it: another important Augsburg engraver, Johann Andreas Pfeffer, issued a book under the same title in 1734 and 1735 with what look like the same plates, but it has only ninety-six. There are copies at the University of Groningen, the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, the Staats- und Stadtbibliothek Augsburg, and the Getty Research Center in Los Angeles.

The plate on the left is reproduced from the Pfeffer edition of the Kleines Bilder-Cabinet reproduced on p.58 of the exhibition catalog Deutsche Kinderbücher des 18. Jahrhunderts, (Cotsen Reference Z1035.3 .D52). It faces the same plate in the uncolored copy of Engelbrecht edition (Cotsen 21019).

Given the interest in educational reform during the early modern period, I was curious how the Kleines Bilder-Cabinet would compare to others from the period, so I lined up some more polyglot school books on my desk. The Kleines Bilder-Cabinet has been described as a picture dictionary, but that turns out to be something of a misnomer. Here’s a contemporary example of a picture dictionary, Primitiva Latinae linguae, which was published by Peter Conrad Monath in Nurnberg in the 1730s. It is quite easy to see that one book is an apple, and the other an orange.

Title page, Primitiva latinae linguae, (Cotsen 1088)

Page 1 and plate 1, Primitiva latinae linguae.

In the Primitiva Latinae linguae, the vocabulary is arranged alphabetically by the Latin word, followed by its German and French equivalents. The words are numbered sequentially, so that it is easy to find the corresponding pictures on the plate opposite. But there are more words on the page than there are illustrations on the plate. Quite logically, the words that are unillustrated like “acerbus” and “adulter” are also unnumbered, so the student knows not to go hunting for a picture. One of the students who owned the book made neat additions to text pages in the right hand and lower margins throughout the book. So the Kleines Bilder-Cabinet really can’t be considered a pictionary, if only because the content isn’t arranged in alphabetical order. Only the name of the thing is provided, I suppose, because the picture makes a verbal description unnecessary.

And it’s not a direct descendant of Johann Amos Comenius’ Orbis Sensualium Pictus, where the author gave considerable thought as to how to best visualize a thing, a category, a process, a concept, etc. and then provided a pithy description of the illustration in order to give the reader a clear idea of it. Comenius’ inspired pedagogy is nicely reflected in the section on the bedroom, where he succeeds in demonstrating how the objects’ interrelated functions are determined by their location in a particular space.

And the Kleines Bilder-Cabinet isn’t a hybrid text like J. G. Seybold’s Teutsch-Lateinisches Worterbuchlein (Nurnberg: J. F. Rudiger, 1733), which is part dictionary, part encyclopedia. Seybold classified some 6000 words into categories and each one is illustrated with a block about the size of a man’s thumbnail. The page is laid out in six columns, three of images, and three of words, so a lot of information can be packed into a small page. Even though it can be difficult to make out the thumbnails or read the words, the page looks legible overall rather than cluttered because of all the white space.

Where Comenius described the ship in a double-page spread illustrated with one block, Seybold offered the reader five pages covered with dozens of blocks showing all the ship’s parts. The student who used Seybold would certainly acquire a much more extensive nautical vocabulary than he would from the Orbis Pictus, but it would come at the expense of a basic understanding of the interconnection of parts.

The Kleines Bilder-Cabinet represents yet another approach to impressing foreign-language vocabulary on school-boy brains. The model for the book may be a mid-seventeenth-century French work for teaching Latin, with which Engelbrecht might have been familiar: Louis Couvay’s set of plates based on the work of fifteenth century Belgian grammarian Johannes de Spater, Method nouvelle et tres-exacte pour enseigner et apprendre la premiere partie de Despautaire (1649). Couvay was related to the engraver Jean Couvay, who executed the handsome plates. The volume was subsequently issued under the more pithy and accurate title, Le Despautaire en tables. It seems to have been in circulation until the 1700s, although it has to be said that the surviving copies are not easy to date with much precision.

The family resemblance between the two books isn’t hard to see. Each plate in Couvay is devoted to the particular Latin declension identified in the heading. The picture plane is divided into a grid and each box contains a small picture with a caption. Note that the size and number of the boxes varies considerably from leaf to leaf, as does the quantity and placement of explanatory text.

Engelbrecht did not copy Couvay religiously, however, designing a regular grid of nine boxes all the same size. The plate has a heading for the Latin declension it illustrates, but no text beyond the captions. Inside each box, the Latin word ought to come first, but perhaps because the book was produced in Germany, the German translation precedes it in large type, and after the Latin comes the French and Italian translations. It’s hard to know if the change in order was confused or helped students, but it could have been dictated more by marketing than pedagogy. Books or toys produced in Germany with polyglot texts — the content usually radically simplified to so that captions in three or four languages can be squeezed into a small space — I tend to regard as evidence for plans to distribute in German and abroad on the Continent.

Engelbrecht was not the only engraver who preferred a simpler layout: Nurnberg engraver Christoph Weigel stripped it down even more radically in the Neuer Lust-Weg. Here the grids have just six boxes and they are large enough to allow for a clear and legible layout of the Latin, German, French, Italian captions within (the German words at the bottom of the boxes are written in Sutterlin script). All attempt to integrate grammar and visuals has been abandoned and the pictures are arranged on the plates in random order. While it makes for an undeniably attractive presentation, it is harder to imagine how the teacher used the book during lessons.

It struck me that the engraved grids in the Kleines Bilder-Cabinet, Couvay, and the Neuer Lust-Weg resemble wall charts that have been part of school room décor since the early nineteenth century. Or at least that is what histories of education that cover the subject tell us. And I couldn’t help but notice that the Kleines Bilder-Cabinet and the Primitiva latinae linguae both have frontispieces showing classrooms decorated with floor-to-ceiling grids of pictures. Could illustrations like these be one of the few sources we have for this alternative to wall charts?Somewhere has a school room wall decorated in this manner survived miraculously?

On the left is the frontispiece for the Kleines Bilder-Cabinet zu Erlernung der Vier Sprachen and on the right is the frontispiece to the Primitiva latinae linguae.

Should the these books I’ve been comparing in this post be thought of as collections of miniature charts that students could have at hand where ever they happened to be working on their lessons? Of course such books have to have been expensive, but even so, would they have been accessible to more students than those fortunate enough to live where there were dedicated school rooms with painted walls, or walls hung with tables painted on fabric or glazed prints?

This attempt to learn more about Pamela’s gift turned out to be a fascinating exercise: the descriptions in the Princeton on-line catalogue suggested that they all might be different attempts to further the pedagogy of visible language pioneered by Comenius, but it turns out that there was no consensus as to the best way to integrate the pictures with the text. Different books offered different solutions to the very real problem of how to impress the thing, the word, and its representation on the student’s memory.

Pamela will not see this post. I’m sorry to have to close this with the sad news that the small world of American collectors of early children’s books was reduced and diminished by her death at age eighty-one in September 2014. Pamela was one of a kind and her sharp mind, engaging curiosity, and high energy will be missed.

Special thanks go to Pamela’s daughter Cynthia Gibbs and Pamela’s beloved husband of sixty-one years, W. Benson Harer MD, a distinguished collector in the field of Egyptology, for donating this splendid book to Cotsen as a final remembrance of Pam.

Benson and Pamela Harer

]]>https://blogs.princeton.edu/cotsen/2014/12/martin-engelbrechts-kleines-bilder-cabinet-a-gift-to-cotsen-from-pamela-k-harer/feed/0Teaching the Untouchable: Rare Books Education in Elementary School Classroomshttps://blogs.princeton.edu/cotsen/2014/12/teaching-the-untouchable-rare-books-education-in-elementary-school-classrooms/
https://blogs.princeton.edu/cotsen/2014/12/teaching-the-untouchable-rare-books-education-in-elementary-school-classrooms/#commentsWed, 03 Dec 2014 19:32:40 +0000http://blogs.princeton.edu/cotsen/?p=1873Continue reading →]]>We are pleased to share that Dr. Dana Sheridan, Cotsen’s Education and Outreach Coordinator, recently published a paper about her wonderful program: Cotsen in the Classroom. For this program, Dr. Dana brings collections education to New Jersey elementary schools. Over the past 7 years, Dr. Dana has presented collections material in an engaging hands-on environment to over 14,000 children!

Teaching the untouchable: Rare books education in elementary school classrooms, asks the question: can rare books and children mix? And emphatically answers yes!

For the original article, see the November 2014 issue of College and Research Library News (Vol. 75. No. 10): “Teaching the Untouchable.”

Well, you’re not alone! Below are two board books which adapt the classic American novel so that it is more palatable for toddlers and lovers of concision and unique illustrations.

First, Moby-Dick, an Ocean Primer by Jennifer Adams, with art by Alison Oliver (Layton, Utah : Gibbs Smith, 2013). Though not exactly a linear text, the book serves to introduce toddlers to nautical words and themes (as well as some choice quotes from the novel) through striking orange and blue illustrations.

Cover, Cotsen 154079

spread 3

spread 5

spread 9

But if you’re looking for even fewer words and even more unique illustrations then Moby Dick, by the twin brothers Jack and Holman Wang, might be for you (Vancouver : Simply Read Books, 2012). This board book economically sums up Moby-Dick in only 12 words. Each word, however, is accompanied by its own needle-felted illustration. This feature makes this book (and the other classic titles in the authors’ series Cozy Classics)really stand out.

cover, Cotsen 154780

spread 1

spread 4

spread 10

If you enjoy Cozy Classics and want to see more of their illustrations and learn about the creators, check out this interview by Dr. Dana on the Cotsen outreach blog: Pop Goes the Page.

Recently, Cotsen acquired a set of the three titular characters from the folk tale. . . as toys!

Dlouhý, Široký a Bystrozraký : item 6979392

The toys were manufactured in the Czech city of Brno by Umělecko-řemeslné dílny Bohumira Čermáka (the Applied-arts workshop of Bohumira Čermáka) in the 1920’s. The figures are an excellent example of the Vienna Secession artistic approach being applied outside of Austria, and outside of mainstream art mediums (this latter boundary being one which the movement was especially interested in challenging).

High, leaning on his staff for support

Wide, but not too wide

Cleareyed, unfortunately he is missing the feather in his cap.

Since we acquired these wonderful toys I wanted to see if Cotsen had any books related to the folk tale. As usual, the collection did not disappoint. We found several brilliantly illustrated books which include the folk tale. We were even fortunate enough to find an english translation of the tale.

from left to right: 33915, 65127, 15156, 28474, 30828

The first book in the picture is a collection of Erben stories translated into English by Dora Round called The Fire Bird and Other Selected Czech Folk and Fairy Stories (London : P.R. Gawthorn, 1943), illustrated by Emil Weiss. The next book is Der Lange, der Dickbäuchige und der Scharfäugige, a German language retelling of High, Wide, and Cleareyed, strikingly illustrated by Květa Pacovská (Praha : Artia Verlag,1979). Then comes a Czech collection of Erben tales: Erbenovy pohádky, illustrated by Jiří Trnka (Praha : Melantrich, 1940). České pohádky is next, written by Erben and illustrated by Artuše Scheinera (Praha : Českomoravské podniky tisařské a vydavatelské, 1926). And last comes Povídám, povídám pohádku, including stories by Erben and other authors this book is illustrated by Rudolf Adámek (V Praze : Ústřední nakladatelství a knihkupectví učitelstva československého, 1929).

Below is a brief retelling of the classic Czech folktale (paraphrased from Round’s translation), complete with numerous illustrations from the sources above:

The story opens with an aged king and his only son. Since the king is old, he requests that his son marry soon, before he dies. The prince is eager to wed and make his father happy but he doesn’t have the slightest idea of who he can marry. The king hands his son a key and instructs him to climb to the top of a tower and from the portraits he finds there, he should select a bride.

The king and the prince, page [1] 28474

In the tower the prince finds twelve magical portraits of crowned maidens, each one beckoning towards him. They are all very beautiful, but behind a white curtain the prince finds the most beautiful of them all, but she is dressed all in white and looks pale and sad. The prince chooses her as his bride and informs his father who is immediately unhappy. The king explains that that particular maiden is imprisoned by an evil wizard. Many have tried to rescue her before but none have returned (of course).

The tower, page [2] 28474

Behind the curtain, page 88 33915

At the start of the prince’s quest for his bride, he quickly gets lost in the woods. But he runs into High, who magically stretches taller than the trees and finds the quickest way out of the woods. Next High sees his friend Wide and brings him over. Wide demonstrates that he can expand to huge proportions.

High reaches, page [4] 28474

The prince meets Wide, page 18-19 spread 65127

Next they run into High’s friend Cleareyed, who explains that he must keep his eyes covered because he can see too well, if his eyes are uncovered he can look through objects, burst them into flames, or shatter them to pieces.

The prince’s three new helpers prove invaluable for overcoming obstacles and turning what would otherwise be a very long journey into a single day trip. They arrive inside the wizard’s castle at nightfall, and the drawbridge is drawn-up behind them.

page 11 30828

plate 92 33915

recto frontispiece 65127

Inside the castle, all the courtiers have been turned to stone. They happen upon the dining room where a lavish feast is prepared, after politely waiting, they decide to dig in. Suddenly the wizard rushes in. He is dressed in a long black robe fastened with three iron clasps at the waist; he is leading the lovely pale maiden, dressed in white and pearls. The wizard explains that the prince can take the maiden only if he can prevent the wizard from stealing her back over the next three nights in the castle. High stretches across the dining room covering all the walls, wide blocks the doorway, and Cleareyed stands vigil in the center. They all fall asleep.

The castle, plate 16 15156

The dinner hall, page 15 30828

When the prince awakes he realizes the maiden has vanished. Cleareyed, however, spots her one hundred miles off, turned into an acorn on a tree in a forest. High stretches to her position and Cleareyed fetches her. She turns back into a woman when she is delivered to the prince. The wizard, naturally, is furious and then one of the iron clasps bursts off. The travelers are left alone again and the prince realizes that everything and everyone inside the castle is frozen in time.

Fetching the acorn, page 31 65127

All are turned to stone, page [14] 28474

Our heroes are charged with watching over the maiden for a second night, they all fall asleep like before. Again the princess is gone when they wake. Cleareyed spots her two hundred miles off, this time turned into a jewel inside a stone, inside a mountain. He and High fetch her again. The furious wizard loses a second iron clasp.

Once again the our heroes are charged with watching over the maiden for a third night, once again they all fall asleep, and once again the maiden has vanished when they awake. Cleareyed spots the princess at the bottom of the Black Sea, as a gold ring inside a shell, three hundred miles away. This time High takes Wide and Cleareyed with him. High tries to stretch his arm to the bottom of the sea, but he cannot reach. So Wide puffs himself out and then drinks up the Black Sea, and then High can reach the gold ring.

Retrieving the ring just in time, page 43 65127

The wizard bursts into the dining room triumphantly before the prince’s companions can return. But all of a sudden, the gold ring comes crashing through a window and turns into the princess (Cleareyed had seen the wizard coming and High had thrown the ring from very far away). The wizard curses, his last buckle bursts, and he turns into a crow and flies off.

The crow, page 20 15156

The whole castle comes to life and time happily resumes. All the residents of the castle thank the prince, but he humbly insists that it is all thanks to High, Wide, and Cleareyed. The prince and princess are married and the wedding lasts three weeks. The prince tries to persuade his new friends to stay and have a comfortable life, but they choose to wander the world helping people instead.

The happy marriage, page 51 65127

The heroes wander on, page [18] 28474

We hope you enjoy these tales, toys, and pictures as much as we do. It’s always a pleasure to discover what gets offered to the collection and what the collection has to offer.
]]>https://blogs.princeton.edu/cotsen/2014/11/toys-and-books-from-a-czech-fairy-tale-dlouhy-siroky-a-bystrozraky-high-wide-and-cleareyed/feed/0Beatrix Potter Figurines, “Vienna Bronzes”?https://blogs.princeton.edu/cotsen/2014/10/beatrix-potter-figurines-vienna-bronzes/
https://blogs.princeton.edu/cotsen/2014/10/beatrix-potter-figurines-vienna-bronzes/#commentsFri, 17 Oct 2014 21:15:36 +0000http://blogs.princeton.edu/cotsen/?p=1766Continue reading →]]>

The whole family! in process item no. 6935392

Cotsen recently acquired a large collection of 62 bronze Beatrix Potter figurines. The group was assembled over a period of years by Diana R. Tillson, whose remarkable collection of materials on the history of music education and appreciation are part of the Cotsen Children’s Library. The figures are hand painted and range in size from 1.5 to 7 centimeters in three general size categories (8 large, 32 medium, and 22 small). From Benjamin Bunny to Tom Kitten, these bronzes boast an array of familiar and beloved Beatrix Potter characters.

The “large” figurines; the tallest of which only measures 7 centimeters high.

the middle sized group, each around 3 to 5 centimeters high.

the very small figurines, all around 2 centimeters high.

The whole group again, with a quarter for scale.

Bronze figurines, Potter-related and otherwise, are often found on Ebay and in auction catalogs, in gift shops and collectibles magazines. In all these various places these collectibles are almost ubiquitously referred to as “Vienna bronzes”, usually “cold painted”: an Art Deco technique in which the metal is first chemically treated then painted and then covered in a fixative. Many larger bronzes are stamped with a maker’s signature. The most familiar in the market is the cartouche of the Viennese manufacturer Franz Bergmann which often appears, unpalindromatically, as NAMGREB (with the last N dropped). But our Potter figurines, and other bronzes of similar size, are too small to bear any maker’s mark. Although these tiny figurines claim a Viennese origin, grasping at associations with those larger and verifiable pieces and with that Austrian city of art and culture, their place of manufacture is not actually noted on the objects themselves.

So while doing research for this blog post I discovered a very strange thing: namely, that the manufacturer and date of these adored collectibles is almost impossible to ascertain!

As has already been mentioned, whenever these objects appear for sale on the web or in trade catalogs, they usually don’t mention a manufacturer. Even in one very famous collection of “Vienna Bronze” Potter figurines, that of Doris Frohnsdorff (featured in the April 16th, 1997 Christie’s auction catalog of her sizable and one-of-a-kind Beatrix Potter collection), the manufacturer is not mentioned. This collection, now in the possession of the rare book dealer David Brass, was reviewed by Greta Schuster, a knowledgeable Potter collector. Of the Frohnsdorff collection (and Vienna Bronzes in general) she said “The Vienna Bronzes are a minefield, from what I can see in your pictures you have a very good selection of old ones (with whiskers), approx. 1913 – 1933… What you have to look out for are ones that were made yesterday and made to look worn and old; yes there are fake Vienna Bronzes.”

To the best of our knowledge and ability we can cautiously conclude that our collection is authentic. Our miniatures are probably contemporaneous with the Frohnsdorff collection, resembling similar quality and condition (our whiskers are intact too!). Although we can claim that our bronzes were probably made in the period between wars, we still don’t know by whom. From what I’ve been able to uncover, this isn’t an problem particular to bronzes. All kinds of collectibles (lead soldiers, pewter figures, porcelain dolls, crystal statuettes, etc.) are listed online, in hobby magazines, and trade catalogs without ever indicating a manufacturer.

Nevertheless, it seems that there are only two companies which could be responsible for the creation of authentic Vienna Bronze Beatrix Potter figurines in the early 20th Century: Franz Bergmann (sold to Karl Fuhrmann & Co. in 1960) and Fritz Bermann; firms with misleadingly similar names that were both started in or around Vienna ca. 1850. On the history page of Bermann’s website, the firm indicates that they fixed a licensing agreement with Warne (the late Potter’s publisher) to produce figurines from Potter’s stories only very recently, in 1984. So we might ostensibly count them out and conclude that only Bergmann could have made our little figurines. Yet both firms have been advertised as the manufacturer of antique Beatrix Potter pieces (though they are, of course, easy to mix up).

It still remains unclear, however, if Potter authorized any Vienna Bronzes during her lifetime. So it is always possible that these miniatures were made by different firms than the ones mentioned but are simply untraceable. We might never get a clear answer regarding the origin of Potter bronzes from this period or our Potter bronzes in particular. If we can conclude that our figurines are not piracies (if indeed they all even came from the same place), then they were most likely made by Bergmann. But given the muddled past and current market, it might be impossible to say for sure. At the very least, we are pleased to have received a charming collection of Vienna Bronze Beatrix Potter figurines that were carefully cast, painstakingly painted, and lovingly cared for.

]]>https://blogs.princeton.edu/cotsen/2014/10/beatrix-potter-figurines-vienna-bronzes/feed/0Harry Potter and the Mystery of the Author’s Namehttps://blogs.princeton.edu/cotsen/2014/09/harry-potter-and-the-mystery-of-the-authors-name/
https://blogs.princeton.edu/cotsen/2014/09/harry-potter-and-the-mystery-of-the-authors-name/#commentsMon, 15 Sep 2014 18:53:25 +0000http://blogs.princeton.edu/cotsen/?p=1659Continue reading →]]>(Written by Team Cotsen)

But what’s in a name really? We could say that names are important. Think of how much effort parents put into giving their new baby the perfect name. Or we could argue that names do not really matter. After all “a rose by any other name would smell as sweet.” Confucius cautioned that “if names be not correct, language is not in accordance with the truth of things”. But names just do so often fail to tell us anything useful about their possessors. Names can even be disadvantageous to their owners when they are interpreted through sweeping generalizations and preconceived bias.

Writer J.K. Rowling knows all about the contradictory nature of names—their undeniable influence and false promises. When naming characters in the wizarding world of the Harry Potter series, she masterfully plays with the meaning, form, and sound of names. Think of Professor Trelawney, who teaches at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. As a Divination teacher and the great-great-granddaughter of a celebrated seer, she is appropriately named “Sibyll” after Sibyl, prophetess in Greek legend. Her telling first name and impressive pedigree notwithstanding, Sibyll Trelawney appears to be an untalented fake with no real foretelling skills to pass along to young witches and wizards. However, after we have all dismissed her as a fraud, like Hermione has early on, we gradually learn that Sibyll is the progenitor of major prophecies that have had a profound impact. An irony turns on its head.

Or think of Tom Riddle. In bygone days when he answered to his birth name, Tom is known as school prefect, Head Boy, and winner of the Award for Special Services to the School. Handsome and well-liked by most Hogwarts teachers, Tom is expected to head for a spectacular future. In the story Tom himself tinkers with the power of naming by making a riddle out of it (see what I did there?). He anagrams his own full name Tom Marvolo Riddle in order to create his darker moniker out of the same letters–I am Lord Voldemort. When Tom reappears under that new title, he fashions a new identity imbued with so much terror that its mere mention sends fearsome vibes around, a bit like the naming of the Devil in superstition or black magic legends.

Other Harry Potter characters have suggestive names: for instance, Lupin, Black, Malfoy, as well as Harry. Lupin’s name suggests his werewolf aspect and seems to add a sinister touch to his character in a world where neither Harry nor the reader knows whom to trust. Similarly, Sirius Black is first presented as a villain, a supposed “mass murderer” and a practitioner of dark magic. Both names belie the true nature of these wizards’ benevolence (and their canine associations), as the reader discovers only after events unfold in the books. Malfoy? Bad faith, bad intentions, malefactor… What about Harry? Harry is a common nickname for Henry in England. Henry V, one of the great heroes of English history, is generally called “Harry” in Shakespeare’s play Henry V. What better, and more typically English, first name could there be for a heroic young wizard?

Some characters’ names seem to evoke the old-time and eccentric world of Harry Potter. Filch, Snape, Slughorn, for instance. All could be characters’ names out of a Charles Dickens’s novel, along with the likes of Pecksniff, Chuzzlewit, Magwitch, Miss Haversham, and Uriah Heep.

Meanwhile in the muggle world, Rowling and her publishers know all about the promises and misgivings of naming firsthand. Most people have noticed that the title of the first volume differs between British and American editions (Philosopher’s Stone versus Sorcerer’s Stone). The book’s American publisher, A.A. Levine Books, felt that the medieval alchemical connotations of the “Philosopher’s Stone” would be lost on an American audience, and that the alliteration of sorcerer and stone was more pleasing anyway. It is likewise common knowledge that her editor at Bloomsbury Publishing suggested using initials on the book cover of the first edition so as not to give away Rowling’s gender. A female author named “Joanne” was considered a potential turn-off for boy readers (and might still be perceived so, despite the phenomenal contributions that writers like Rowling and Suzanne Collins have made to the genre). Not to mention that the use of initials conjures up an association with older male English scholars and authors in the genre, such as C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien.

Common knowledge—at least we thought it was, until a passage found in Marja Mills’s new book, The Mockingbird Next Door: Life With Harper Lee (Penguin, 2014), made the children’s literature community do a double take at the issue:

“Harper Lee” had other benefits that became clear early on. Especially in the early years, not everyone knew the author was a woman. The name could be either. Would S.E. Hinton’s novel about troubled Tulsa teens have taken hold the way it did, especially with boys, if the name on the cover was Susan Eloise Hinton? Joanne Rowling published Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone under that name, but her publishers were looking at the marketplace and so her future books came out under J.K. Rowling. (Mills, 224)

Did Rowling really publish the first installment of her fantasy series under “Joanne,” and change to “J. K.” in the second volume? On the Child_Lit mailing list where the question was posed, even die-hard Harry Potter fans and senior children’s literature scholars were confused by that statement for a moment, unsure if what they had remembered was accurate (Levin et al.).

We think the Cotsen Children’s Library can help clear up the confusion! After a nauseating (as usual) ride accompanied by a trusted libngo to the deepest vaults of Rare Books and Special Collections, we have emerged with several copies of Harry Potter books in their earliest published forms. (You have never heard of “libngos”? They are the special agents who guard library treasures. Yeah, we know the name is a mouthful and, occasionally, our libngos have been disgruntled that their title does not sound as fantastical as that of their colleagues who work for Gringotts.)

A few Harry Potter copies housed at the Cotsen Children’s Library. From left to right: an uncorrected proof (Cotsen 52989), first American edition (Cotsen 21739), and a German translation (Cotsen 16930).

You may have noticed that the name “J.K. Rowling” is not ubiquitous in all editions. The German edition of Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire above displays the name “Joanne K. Rowling” on the cover, which encourages the speculation that the initials-and-last-name format does not carry the same connotation in Germany as it does in Anglophone countries.

Let’s take a closer look at the different editions of the first volume we have here at Cotsen.

But the title page ascription has a typo! Apparently J. A. Rowling wrote this book . . . good thing it is just the uncorrected proof.

Notice how the copyright is issued to “Joanne Rowling.”

Cotsen’s copy is even signed by the author, as J.K. Rowling.

Next up, our copy of the 1998 first American edition, first issue (46385):

The very familiar ascription to “J.K. Rowling” and Mary GrandPré cover art introduced the series to millions of American children, young adults, and grown-ups.

the title page with the vignette of Hogwarts

Unlike the British edition, the ascription “Joanne Rowling” does not appear on the copyright page of the American edition, or anywhere else for that matter.

On the back of the dust jacket, notice how the author is referred to as the single mother “Ms. Rowling.”

Last but not least (and drum roll please), a copy of the definitive 1997 first British edition, first issue (Cotsen 36550):

A much less familiar front cover, illustrated by Thomas Taylor.

Title page ascribed to J. K. Rowling!

The copyright, however, is ascribed here to Joanne Rowling.

back cover

A modest number of hardbound copies were printed for the first issue of the first British edition. Various sources on the Internet have given that total number as 350 or 500, and indicated that at least 300 of them were distributed to libraries. Cotsen has acquired one of the ex-library copies. Judging by the frayed book covers and by the crowded circulation stamps, which run to a second charge slip not shown in the photo below, this copy must have served the residents of Carlisle, UK very well.

The original owning library stamped front paste down endpaper.

Though it is hard to make out here, the earliest stamped check-out date is “Sept. 11, 1998.”

In short, the answer to the quiz that began this post is: All of the following!

Language—and how learning about language can be presented in children’s books—was on my mind this past week, while cataloging three new ABC books here at the Cotsen Library. Before I began working with Cotsen books, I would have said that books about language or the alphabet–especially children’s books–would have been more or less “content neutral.” After all, what could be more straightforward than teaching letters of the alphabet, syllables, short words, and basic reading, right? Wrong…as I’ve discovered–and enjoyed discovering. Since letters, syllables, and words may seem to be just there on the page, it’s easy to overlook how language acts as a provider of meaning(s), in addition to being a container for meaning.

But language is inherently charged with meaning, and its use full of cultural values and ideology, as various writers have observed. Language’s potential for both clarity or ambiguity can be used—or manipulated—by a writer or speaker. Sometimes the way we use language is conscious and sometimes our use of language reflects our education, culture, and formative influences. Sometimes it’s both intended and unconscious.

In a book, meaning can also be shaped, extended, or modified by visual elements. This is particularly evident in children’s illustrated books, where the balance of text and illustrative elements can be more equal—or the visual can even take precedence over the text that it “accompanies.” Take early alphabet books, for instance. The New England Primer, the first primer (or ABC teacher and elementary reader) first issued in the United States in the 1670s, famously begins its alphabet rhymes with the verse:

Accompanying this verse is a woodcut showing Adam and Eve standing under the Tree of Knowledge in the Garden of Eden, apparently just before eating the apple. Apart from the mnemonic aspect of the rhyme itself–making it easy to remember (and recite)—the illustration complements the cautionary nature of the text in a pretty vivid way that likely stayed in young reader’s minds.

Language is being presented as more or less inseparable from religion and moral teaching: A is for Adam, the original co-sinner, for the eating of the Apple. Other illustrative examples in the Primer include Job, Queen Esther, and the whale that swallowed Jonah—along with a cat, a dog, and an “idle fool” with a dunce cap, everyday object-examples presumably readily accessible to children at the time. This is consistent with Locke’s recommended use of familiar, everyday objects—and pictures of them—as learning aids for educating children and for fixing concepts more vividly in their minds.

I’ve always found it interesting that some later alphabet books replace Adam with Apple. For a reader in this Age of Irony, it’s hard not to find this a little ironic, but it’s hard to tell if this would have seemed so to a nineteenth-century reader. Perhaps it was ironic to some readers, but not to others. It’s always dangerous—although tempting—to view the past through the filter of our implicit present-day values and attitudes or to make sweeping, “historicizing” generalizations about what “everyone thought” at the time from our vantage-pont long after the original audience’s reception.

If nothing else, this change from Adam to Apple seemingly reflects an relatively increasing secularization in the mid-1800s, compared with the 1670s (nineteenth-century people were still generally religious, of course, but religion had been complemented, or diffused, by other spiritual and cultural influences). Merely one of many ABC books using “A is for Apple” is McLoughlin Brothers’ Aunt Lely’s Picture Alphabet (New York, [between 1863 and 1866]). McLoughlin Brothers, the preeminent American popular children’s book publisher of their time, was a master at providing books—and content—that people wanted to buy, so “marketability” must also have been at least a partial factor in the content they selected here. Maybe fire and brimstone didn’t sell as well in the mid- and latter-1800s and early 1900s? Perhaps Apple was a little more “up-to-date” and familiar to children then too? Likely, some combination of all these factors factored into the text and illustration of this “A is for Apple” book.

Apples are also nicely colorful objects, suited to the sort of chromolithographed color illustration that McLoughlin pioneered in the mid- late-1800s. So printing technology would seem to have played a part in this changeover too. Even though Aunt Lely’s Alphabet (pictured above) doesn’t have colored illustrations, many of McLouglin’s books did, and you can readily imagine how strikingly visual the large apple shown in Aunt Lely’s Alphabet would be if it was colored in bright red. (Chromolithographs are often notable for their extra-vivid, slightly surreal colors.) Sometimes, the Apple even found its way onto an apple pie, as in Warne’s A is for Apple Pie, thus moving us all the way from a cautionary Garden of Eden to a veritable kitchen cook-book.

Three Recently-cataloged Alphabet Books

The Alphabet Ladder, or Gift for the Nursery (London, after 1817) provides a relatively early example of a colored alphabet book; it dates from some time after 1817 (when its publisher George Martin began publishing) and features hand- or stencil-colored engravings.

The front wrapper of this sixteen-page book has a paper onlay depicting a Britannia-like Fame (name printed on her shield) standing atop a structure of alphabet letters—the alphabet ladder, perhaps?—and some fashionably-dressed children (the target audience for this not inexpensive one shilling book?); the frontispiece-like front pastedown provides a similar illustration, a striking visual presentation, I think. (Compare the illustration shown on the right with the cover label shown at the bottom of this posting.)

The letter A is illustrated here by a (boy-like) King Alfred, instead of by Adam or an Apple, an interesting complement to the Bullfinch pictured below, a bird that would probably have been familiar to a child-reader at the time.

“A is for King Alfred,” The Alphabet Ladder, (G. Martin, [bet. 1817 and 1839]), Cotsen new accession

English history is being used along with familiar objects perhaps to add a touch of history to visual examples making letters more vivid. Generally accepted as the first king of a united England, Alfred the Great would have a strong patriotic connotation to an English boy or girl, especially about this time, the era of the Napoleonic Wars, in which England and France of course figured large. So it’s not so very surprising that another illustrative colored engraving presents a sword-flourishing Frenchman, looking very much like Napoleon himself, complete with a bicorne hat tucked under his arm. Parodic mockery of a vainglorious Napoleon was a staple of English satirists at the time and can be observed in a number of English children’s books.

Pictured above the Frenchman is a brightly-colored Egg Plum, another object familiar to children, as was the Bullfinch. This juxtaposition of historical personages and everyday items or animals may seem a bit strange to us now.

“F is for Frenchman…” The Alphabet Ladder, Cotsen new accession

But such combinations are not all the unusual in children’s ABCs, and it was also quite common for a publisher to “update” a book with some “new” or topical illustrations or textual content. A quick and dirty way to provide a “revised edition” perhaps and encourage some new sales? And what better way to entice a young reader than blatantly patriotic and relevant contemporary examples in wartime? Offhand, I’d say that The Alphabet Ladder—and it’s illustrative examples—would appeal more to a boy that a girl; apart from the warlike soldiers, almost all of the children pictured inside the book are boys—adding an interesting gendered aspect to the presentation of the actual alphabet, which is belied by the cover and frontispiece featuring two boys and two girls.

We find a similar juxtaposition of commonplace illustrative examples and patriotic ones in another new Cotsen title: Solomon King’s: The Pictured Alphabet (New York, ca. 1820). K is for Kite, another familiar object to a child then, but N is for…Napoleon, somewhat surprisingly perhaps in an American book of the time.

K is for Kite, N is for Napoleon, The Pictured Alphabet, (Solomon King, ca. 1820)Cotsen new accession

Another pair of facing illustrative wood-engravings shows a Dunce to illustrate the letter D and a Guard the letter G, the latter looking distinctly English (and I think grenadier guards were generally a European type of soldier).

D is for Dunce, G is for Guard, The Pictured Alphabet,Cotsen new accession

Yet another pair of illustrations shows a tankard—Quenching thirst, I guess—to illustrate the letter Q, which faces the letter T’s Trumpet, here having been affixed with the letters “US,” adding both a topical and patriotic military touch to the American publication. (And while a tankard was more of an all-purpose drinking cup in 1820 then than it is now, the association with beer and ale must have been apparent when this book was published. Imagine a children’s alphabet featuring anything like a beer mug now!)

Q is for Quench, T is for Trumpet,The Pictured Alphabet, Cotsen new accession

Some of these combinations suggest that the printing blocks may have either come from Europe, or been adaptations of European ones; 1820 is relatively early in American printing and publishing development, with type and book-printing blocks still often being imported from Europe rather than being manufactured domestically. King’s book is a fairly simple production—even a somewhat primitive one—small in size (just 3 ½ inches tall) with simple illustrations and no text other than the alphabet letters themselves; after all, it is a one penny book, as the publisher’s advertisement on the lower wrapper tells us. (In contrast, the relatively deluxe Alphabet Ladder has a cover price of a full English shilling for the “coloured” version.) But The Pictured Alphabet is also quite a rare book now, no copy other than Cotsen’s being found in OCLC’s combined libraries catalog. Sometimes, cheap books in wrappers must have been used and then discarded once their condition deteriorated—unlike more expensive books, which were often more likely to be retained.

“And they sighed by reason of their bondage…” Title page vignette The Anti-Slavery Alphabet, (Belfast, Anti-Slavery Society, 1849) Cotsen new accession

“For indeed, I was stolen out of the land,” Vignette on title page verso The Anti-Slavery Alphabet, (Belfast, Anti-Slavery Society, 1849) Cotsen new accession

Another intentionally topical alphabet book—and one with a clearly moral didactic goal—is the Anti-Slavery Society’s: The Anti-Slavery Alphabet (Belfast, 1849). Apart from the very title and didactic approach of the text, there’s a striking wood-engraved title-page vignette depicting a slave sale, and another illustration on the verso side depicting a slave telling a seated white man and woman: “For indeed I was stolen out of the land.”

Even without the caption text beneath them, these two illustrations make their meaning clear. These illustrations are the only ones in this twelve-page book, somewhat unusual for the time perhaps, and the gathering of printed pages comes within plain paper wrappers with no text, advertising, or illustration on them. Perhaps this is a function of cost? Or perhaps the publisher like the Anti-Slavery Society didn’t think that such “marketing” aspects were appropriate (or needed) for a book presumably sold or given away by/to people of strong conviction? These conjectures are just a couple of the possible explanations.

A is for Abolitionist…The Anti-Slavery Alphabet, Cotsen new accession

But the four-line alphabet rhymes for each alphabet letter speak compellingly to the book’s underlying moral purpose: to teach children about the evils of slavery and move them to moral awareness, in part by making them aware of their own potential complicity for enjoying sweet treats made from slave-produced sugar. Apart from the A,B,C rhymes pictured at right, some other verses read:

I is the Infant, from the arms
Of its fond mother torn,
And, at a public auction, sold
With horses, cows, and corn.

S is the Sugar, that the slave
Is toiling hard to make,
To put in your pie and tea,
Your candy, and your cake.

U is for Upper Canada,
Where the poor slave has found
Rest after all his wanderings
For it is British ground!

Why “Upper Canada” and “British ground”? While this book may seem directed at American audiences, it was printed in Belfast, Ireland. Escaped slaves often tried to reach Canada, via the Underground Railroad and other means, because slavery had been outlawed in most of the British Empire by the Slavery Abolition Act of 1833. Canada was then part of the British Empire, and Upper Canada was the area what we now know as Southern Ontario, bordering New York State (Lower Canada being Quebec).

So, looking at this batch of three new Cotsen alphabet books, I think we can understand some of the many, wide-ranging “educational” goals that ABC books subserved, teaching language mechanics being just one.

]]>https://blogs.princeton.edu/cotsen/2014/09/a-is-for-apple-adam-abolitionist/feed/0Collector’s condition???https://blogs.princeton.edu/cotsen/2014/08/collectors-condition/
https://blogs.princeton.edu/cotsen/2014/08/collectors-condition/#commentsFri, 22 Aug 2014 20:31:09 +0000http://blogs.princeton.edu/cotsen/?p=1546Continue reading →]]>In the 6th edition of John Carter’s essential ABC for Book Collectors (1980), it is noted on p. 67 that the word “condition” in book collector’s mind “means a good deal more than the volume’s superficial, physical appearance; for the term covers the completeness and integrity of the contents, a proper degree of margin, etc., as well as the beauty or appropriateness or originality, and the state of preservation of the covering.”

Children’s books obviously weren’t on Carter’s radar screen, because if you want to collect historical children’s books, almost nothing comes up to his gold standard.

“Nye Billed=A,B,C for Børn,” page 1 with ‘annotation’

Take the Danish alphabet book, Nye Billed=A,B,C for Børn [New Illustrated ABC for Children] (Alborg, 1778), in the Cotsen Children’s Library. It is one of the earliest alphabets of proper names I’ve ever seen and unusual for having been designed as a set of little picture cards, which were probably supposed to be cut apart by little learners. It passes the rarity test: when I couldn’t find a description of it, I wrote to a Danish colleague for help. She was absolutely thrilled to learn of its existence, because she had never heard of it either.

Many collectors I know would never consider giving shelf space to a scruffy pamphlet bound in wrappers of a thickish paper the color of burned porridge. To add injury to insult, most of the pages have been scrawled upon by disrespectful young persons. None of it could be graced with the term “marginalia.” But look closely at the “annotations” and you will find some absolutely delightful stick figures interacting with the illustrations. If given a choice between a pristine copy and this one with all the doodling, there’s no question in my mind which one is in superior condition…

Above are two recently purchased acquisitions. The larger object, featured here with its brown cloth silk-screened slip case, stamped title piece, and twine ties, is the artist’s book Grimm, created by Mikhail Magaril and Victor Bogorad (New York: Summer Garden Editions, 2012). The work consists of twelve pasted together 23 x 14.5 inch folio leaves (in this way each full-page spread is in fact one large single sheet). Nine of these are solely devoted to a different Grimm tale or theme. Every page is Illustrated throughout by Magaril’s iconic ink blots, printed in letterpress, and silk screened in both black and brown; the work is truly unique (it is actually the first of only ten copies).

We are fortunate to have this very haunting, and very Russian, interpretation of the Grimm fairy tales and their more nefarious aspects. As the artists explain in the book’s afterword, this work is a reflection upon the artists’ childhood experiences of the Grimm world, which they read, and the real world in the USSR, which they lived: “Life there [the USSR] had much in common with the world of Grimm fairy tales. . . The nightmarish regime badly affected the psyche of children and caused the impressionable young minds to see something sinister in every ink blot” (folio page 11). As you can see for yourself, the book is a truly harrowing and fantastical homage to the Brothers Grimm.

Cover

Endpapers

Title page, spread 1

Spread 2

Der Kleine Däumling (The Little Thumbling), spread 3

The Brother’s Grimm have been included interacting with the fairy tales themselves throughout the work.

The small black cloth box with linen ties (you thought I forgot didn’t you?) is a related treasure to the already prized first item. The title and key to the contents is supplied by the henna inked calligraphic top card:

Sketches for the book Grimm by Mikhail Magaril

Once opened, one is greeted by a grand total of 87 (15 x 10.5 cm) unnumbered deckle edged cards. Though 27 cards are blank, the remaining 60 cards include a vast array of draft illustrations for Grimm by Magaril. The illustrations, executed exclusively in blue and black ink, have been cut out and pasted onto the decorative cards. Below is a small sampling, notice that some of the proofs were not featured in the final product:

Examples, two of which feature two cards bound together.

This large collection of small cards grants us unique access into the creation of the book Grimm. By viewing these proofs, we are offered a little window with which to view the draft processes and production choices of a very talented contemporary artist: Mikhail Magaril.

Not quite the final illustration

For more work by Magaril held at Princeton, check out this blog post by our colleague Julie Mellby, the curator of Graphic Arts: Mikhail Magaril

]]>https://blogs.princeton.edu/cotsen/2014/07/grimm-an-artists-book-and-more/feed/0The Children’s Educator: A Children’s Magazine (or “Publishing Platypus?”) from the Twilight of Imperial Chinahttps://blogs.princeton.edu/cotsen/2014/07/the-childrens-educator-a-childrens-magazine-or-publishing-platypus-from-the-twilight-of-imperial-china/
https://blogs.princeton.edu/cotsen/2014/07/the-childrens-educator-a-childrens-magazine-or-publishing-platypus-from-the-twilight-of-imperial-china/#commentsMon, 21 Jul 2014 16:54:13 +0000http://blogs.princeton.edu/cotsen/?p=1457Continue reading →]]>Even though there had been a long history in China of compiling primers for pupils, it was not until the end of the nineteenth century that, under a heavy Western influence, Chinese intellectuals began in earnest to publish magazines and trade books for the enlightenment and entertainment of children. Following the defeat of the Qing Dynasty by Britain in the First (1839-1842) and Second (1856-1860) Opium Wars, China was forced to end its isolationism and allow a vast increase of foreigners in treaty ports and inland areas. In May 1875, the Brooklyn, New York-based Foreign Sunday-school Association brought the Western practice of publishing children’s books to China and helped to launch The Child’s Paper (小孩月報誌異Xiaohai yuebao zhiyi), a Mandarin-language monthly religious periodical in Shanghai (“Notices” 235; “The Rev. Dr. Mitchell” 6).

Children’s magazines published by Chinese emerged during the 1890s. The earliest title that historians have found is The Children’s Educator (蒙學報Mengxue bao), launched in Shanghai by the Society for Enlightenment Education (蒙學會Mengxue hui) on the first day of the eleventh moon of the 23rd year of the reign of Emperor Guangxu (光绪) (Nov. 24, 1897). Unbeknownst to the members of the Society, Guangxu would be the penultimate emperor in Chinese history. China’s last imperial dynasty would be overthrown a mere fourteen years later in the Xinhai Revolution of 1911. However, an urgent sense of crisis regarding the feeble Qing Dynasty was at the heart of the creation of The Children’s Educator.

The Origin of The Children’s Educator

Two years before the launch of The Children’s Educator, a massive defeat in the First Sino-Japanese War (1894-1895) shook China and proved that the self-strengthening reforms attempted by Qing officials in the aftermath of the Opium Wars were ineffective. The shadow of the humiliating loss to Japan looms large in the magazine. In fact, the geography section of the first issue lists tributaries and territories that China had lost to foreign powers throughout history from the reign of Emperor Daoguang (1820-1850) (道光) to the recent Sino-Japanese War. More importantly, the first issue begins with an essay titled “The Origin of The Children’s Educator” (蒙學報緣起), which articulates the concerns and motivations of its publisher. Written by Ye Lan¹ (葉瀾), the essay was directly influenced by, and frequently records verbatim, reformist Liang Qichao’s (梁啟超1873-1929) writings on elementary education (幼學youxue), which had previously been serialized in Current Affairs (時務報Shiwu bao) from 1896 to 1897.

In his essay (1897), Ye criticizes the ineffective and wasteful teaching methods of traditional Chinese education. He compares the relationship between a pupil and a teacher to that of “an inmate convicted of a felony” looking up at his warden. Studying, Ye writes, blocks a student’s brain and weakens his body. Traditional Chinese education was like sowing more than 400 million fine seeds (the estimated Chinese population of the time) and then exposing them to the elements. Western countries and Japan had new and useful teaching methods, but Chinese educators, even if they knew about them, were either unconvinced of their benefit or afraid of making changes. Ye announced that The Children’s Educator was established because its founding members desperately wished to disseminate this message to the public.

Ye’s criticism, borrowing further from Liang’s writings, goes into more detail. For Chinese children, language and reading instruction consisted of rote memorization of such abstruse Confucius texts as The Great Learning (大學Daxue) and The Doctrine of the Mean (中庸Zhongyong). These books put students to sleep as soon as they opened them. Then teachers would resort to coercion and severe physical punishment. Children could spend several years studying without understanding a single word. Thus, students not only failed to learn anything but also suffered harm to their bodies and minds. Their youth and their parents’ hard-earned money were spent in vain.

Extensively quoting Liang’s writings on the efficiency of Western and Japanese elementary education, Ye explains how young children in those countries were taught differently. According to Liang, Western children first learned single words, starting with words for common objects, discerned the meaning of the words, and then proceeded to make sentences and write compositions. Liang says that required subjects in the West included astronomy, geography, history, and current affairs. Children were glad to learn, because they were taught in ways like magic shows (演戲法yan xifa) and drum ballad story songs (說鼓詞shuo guci). Children learned several foreign languages at an age when their tongues were still flexible. They learned mathematics, which was needed by all trades. They learned music, which freed them from boredom. They learned gymnastics, which “strengthened muscles and bones and made everyone fit to be a soldier” (emphasis mine). Ye could not have emphasized more strongly the relationship between elementary education and national defense.

Ye also analyzes the complexity of Chinese characters and grammar, outdated and practically useless information in classical Chinese geography books like The Classic of the Mountains (山經Shanjing) and Tribute of Yu (禹貢Yugong), and the disconnect between historical Chinese terms for plants and animals and their Western equivalents. He explains how all these issues pose challenges to teaching and learning. However, the essay ends on an optimistic note. Ye sees young children as being free from preconceived ideas and thus more open to changes than adult teachers. If teachers could overcome their fear of the new and challenging and adopt appropriate teaching methods and accessible books, rapid progress would naturally take place. Within two or three years’ time, society would be more open to new ways of doing things. Thousands of years of pernicious influence would dissolve by itself, and 400 million “seeds of the yellow race” (黃種huangzhong) would be securely preserved. That was the responsibility of The Children’s Educator. (Note that Chinese intellectuals of the late Qing dynasty already comfortably identified their people with the “yellow” race, an imprecise term that remains neutral in the Chinese language and carries no derogatory overtone as it does in English.)

Ye’s introductory essay, in summary, ties the education of young Chinese to the destiny of an empire under constant threat and the survival of its people. The magazine’s ambition was to reform Chinese elementary education by introducing new methods and materials from the West and Japan, which its publisher believed would ultimately strengthen China’s defense of its land and people. The magazine was an immediate implementation of Liang Qichao’s ideas for elementary education, which he postulated with passion and patience in his “On Reform” (變法通議Bianfa tongyi) series in Current Affairs. Together with Wang Zhonglin (汪鍾霖1867-?), Wang Kangnian (汪康年1860-1911), Zeng Guangquan (曾廣銓1871-1940), Luo Zhenyu (羅振玉1866-1940), Tan Sitong (譚嗣同1865-1898) and Zhang Taiyan (章太炎1869-1936), Liang was among the earliest and most prominent members of the Society for Enlightenment Education. He would go on to become the foremost intellectual leader of China in the first two decades of the twentieth century.

Publication Format

Scholarship has just begun to recognize The Children’s Educator as the earliest children’s magazine by indigenous Chinese, but an accurate and comprehensive understanding of the publication is wanting. Besides other contributing factors, it probably does not help that the format and content of this initial experimentation with children’s reading materials does not comfortably fit into established categories in modern publishing. Upon close inspection, The Children’s Educator is an unusual species–a “platypus” in the publishing world.

The first confusion surrounds the title and format of the publication. The cover of the magazine carries both a Chinese title Mengxue Bao, literally meaning “The Paper for Enlightenment Learning,” and its title in English translation, printed as “The Childrens’ [sic] Educator” or “The Childens’ [sic] Educator” in various issues. In contemporary Chinese the character bao is commonly associated with newspapers, which are issued on loose and large sheets. In the early days of print media and journalism in China, however, the term was apparently used more broadly to include periodical publications. As we can observe from the physical copy of issue no. 3 held at the Cotsen Children’s Library (Cotsen 102594), The Children’s Educator was a bound publication and issued weekly–for a yearly subscription fee of “four yuan” (n.p.)–and thus qualifies as a magazine title.

2) Book or Periodical?

The Children’s Educator is in effect a cross between a periodical and multiple books. The numbering of leaves in a seemingly bewildering system betrays this amalgamation. In issue no. 1, nearly all the leaves are numbered leaf 1; in issue no. 2, nearly all are marked “leaf 2;” and so on. A close examination found that the magazine is divided into more than a dozen columns, each running the length of one to several leaves in one issue. The content of each column, often serializing a book translated from English or Japanese, is continuous from one issue to the next–it is not unusual that the text unapologetically pauses in mid-sentence to be continued in the next issue–and the numbering of leaves continues within the columns accordingly.

Later on, the magazine informed its subscribers that they could remove the stitches and re-sort the leaves by columns, thus assembling separate books out of the serializations (1899, no. 40, cover). Specifically, editors pointed out that the magazine was designed to enlighten children, and the re-bound volumes could be used as school texts. Still later, the publisher started selling The Children’s Educator series, which were books more or less the same as what the subscribers had been instructed to stitch together themselves out of past issues (Vol. 7, no. 1, Apr. 27, 1903). One book volume held at the Cotsen Children’s Library illustrates this flexible practice of bookmaking in the late Qing period. The Children’s Educator: Mathematics Part II (蒙學報: 算學下) (Cotsen 75995) is a book that teaches math to children between the ages of eleven and thirteen. Because this bound issue seems to miss no leaves and the stitching holes look neat and clean, it is more likely a formal copy from the publisher than a private collection sewn together by a studious subscriber.

The question remains whether the book is exclusively a reissuing of what had been published in the magazine. The first three sections, all under the running title “Books and Papers for Enlightenment Learning” (蒙學書報), clearly mark the numbers of issues (no. 9-20 and no. 61-99) from which the leaves have been assembled. The last section not only appears under a different running title, “Enlightenment Learning Series” (蒙學叢書), but also the paper of most of the leaves differs from the rest of the volume. The folded sheets are slightly crispier and evidently in a yellower shade. Because it lacks issue numbers, it is uncertain if the content of the fourth section had been serialized before or was being released with the book for the first time.

3) Textbook or Children’s Literature?

The Children’s Educator straddles the categories of children’s magazine and textbook. Magazine, because of its mode of issuance. Textbook, because The Children’s Educator was intended as a collection of formal learning materials for children in accordance with Liang Qichao’s vision for new teaching methods. The arrangement of the content, as explained in “The Outline of The Children’s Educator” (蒙學報條例) in its first issue, suggests the careful and extensive planning process that engendered the magazine.

According to the Outline, the magazine planned to offer multi-level elementary learning materials to three age groups: 5-7, 8-12, and above 12. Contents were to be divided into six main columns, roughly covering language and literature, mathematics, ethics, history and events, geography, and natural science. The columns were aligned with the school subjects that the Society was advocating for reformed education. Each column was further divided into sub-topics suitable for different age groups. For example, under the column for language and literature, “learning Chinese characters” was intended for ages 5-7 and “texts translated from Japanese readers,” for ages 8-12.

The magazine systematically translated and serialized children’s learning and reading materials from the West and Japan. The two main translators of the magazine, Zeng Guangquan (for Western languages) and Kojō Teikichi (古城貞吉1866-1949, for Japanese), detailed what topic areas were to be offered in translated sections and how they would support educational reform. A telling passage by Zeng highlights how this weekly magazine is intended for use as children’s textbook material:

Translations are published in the same order as the contents are arranged in the original Western-language books, proceeding from easy pieces to difficult ones. This paper is published every seven days, thus each issue supplies children with readings for seven days’ worth of lessons. (本報均依西文原有之書，依其次序，分課譯出登報。約照本報七日之期，使兒童足為七日課讀爲止。) (1897, no. 1)

Illustration for “The Weaver Girl and the Fairy,” an entry in the section “Laughable Stories for Children,” in The Children’s Educator, no. 3, 1897.

Even though The Children’s Educator can be easily characterized as a textbook in the disguise of a children magazine, it contains patches of soil congenial for the flowering of text and images that meet the modern definition of children’s literature. A curious section offered by the magazine is called “Laughable Stories for Children” (兒童笑話ertong xiaohua), which claims to target ages 8-12 and, for lack of a finer classification, is a sub-category of the history and events column (史事類). The entries tend to be translations from Japanese publications; one source was given as The Adolescents’ World Paper (少年世界報Shōnen Sekai) (1897, no. 1). Animal stories are common.

In “The Weaver Girl and the Fairy” (織女及仙姬), two beauties get into an ugly fight out of jealousy and end up disfiguring each other (1897, no. 2). In another story, a cat is tricked by rats into getting drunk. He then makes a spectacle of himself and fails to perform his duty (1897, no. 4). Mildly comical at best, these stories are essentially fables meant to convey moral messages, as opposed to “jokes,” which is how the Chinese word xiaohua is translated today. As in a fable, the Japanese translator Kojō attaches a moralizing commentary to the end of a few entries (1897, no. 2). Might we argue that a conscious offering of “laughable stories” suggests the editor’s effort to entertain child readers–to engage them in a moral lesson by eliciting a laugh?

Besides fable stories, a second noticeable aspect of the magazine is its emphasis on illustrations and images. Illustrated books for children were not exactly new or foreign in late-Qing China. Long before 1900 there had been centuries of tradition of illustrating The 24 Filial Exemplars (二十四孝), stories that teach Chinese children to pay filial piety. Textbooks that taught Chinese characters to children and adult learners, such as Miscellaneous Characters (雜字), were also illustrated. Even though these publications failed to spawn what could be called an industry of children’s literature in feudal China, the concept that pictures make a book more engaging and easier for child readers to comprehend seemed to be a familiar one. To give more legitimacy to the practice of including images in books, Ye’s introductory essay (1897) asserts that ancient books treat images and text with equal seriousness, but that good tradition was lost in later books–it was a common tactic for Chinese intellectuals to attempt to enhance the authority of a new idea by tracing its root to the revered Chinese tradition and classics. Ye then attributes the problem of confusing Chinese vocabulary for animals and plants to the lack of pictures in past publications. “Without having seen what the objects look like, it must be difficult for children (童子tongzi) to understand [the terms],” he points out.

Keen to practice what it preached, the magazine stresses its effort to provide illustrations in the aforementioned outlines and translators’ statements:

For contents that are translated from the aforementioned books and that would have been unclear without pictures, the magazine hires an illustrator and offers fine pictures to accompany the text, so that children will like and study them. (本報輯譯以上之書，其中有非圖不明者，另請圖繪人。每期按説繪圖，務極精工，以便兒童愛玩。) (1897, no. 1)

The science of physical health needs the assistance of illustrations for clarification. When the Western-language sources contain pictures, we invite well-known illustrators to faithfully transfer the images. (養生之學均須圖説方明。本報於西文書報有圖者，均延名手移繪無差。) (1897, no. 1)

The notion of “transferring the images” is not the same as “copying” or “duplicating.” There might be little room for cultural adaptation when it comes to duplicating a world map or images of plants and animals from a non-Chinese book. When humans are portrayed, however, Chinese illustrators seemed to have made inconsistent decisions as to the national identity of the subjects. For “Lifting a Heavy Man” (舉起重人), a brief entry on physics translated from an unidentified source in the Western language, the illustration shows Chinese people in a Chinese setting (1897, no. 1). In “Promise” (信實) and “Friends” (朋友), which are two entries on ethics translated from Japanese, people dressed in traditional Japanese garments are pictured sitting seiza-style on the floor of a Japanese-style residence, even though the text seems to be referring to historical Chinese figures (1897, no. 3).

4) For Children, Teachers, or Parents?

A final feature that makes The Children’s Educator an intriguing publishing “platypus” in the evolution of Chinese children’s literature is the multiple audiences it targets. In addition to being a magazine that children could read, study, and enjoy, as we shall see in examples below, it contains materials that were clearly intended for teachers and parents.

One of the changes Liang Qichao advocated in his “On Reform” series was to introduce normal schools (師範學校, schools for training elementary teachers) into China’s education system. During the Qing Restoration period (1860-1895), the Chinese government hired foreign instructors–paying them fat salaries that were several times higher than those received by Chinese teachers–for its language and military schools. Liang (416-17) observed the many flaws of relying on imported instructors: their foreign tongues were poorly comprehended by Chinese students, even with the help of interpreters, and they failed to adapt their teaching to Chinese students due to their poor knowledge of the Chinese culture and people. Liang learned about normal schools from the Japanese education system that was established after the Meiji Restoration. Reform, he pointed out, was not only about higher education, it must start with elementary schools as well as normal schools built to supply elementary teachers.

The Children’s Educator expanded Liang’s interest in teacher education by offering information on teaching methods and educational systems in the West and Japan, although not on a regular basis. One entry in issue no. 8 (1898) introduces Kindergarten education, which has been promoted by the German pedagogue Friedrich Fröbel. No. 1 (1903) is devoted to education system of the world and China. Topics range widely from education theory to compulsory education in Japan and France, women’s physical education in America, tuition waivers, and European and American elementary school teachers’ salaries and even their subsidized housing arrangements.

Another category found in early issues is called “Motherhood” (母儀muyi), a distinct offering for mothers on how to be good parents. The column does not seem to persist in later issues. The initial inclusion and subsequent abandonment of the category were perhaps a result of a conflicted view of women’s role in children’s education and the practical concern for how few literate adult Chinese women the magazine was able to reach. The Motherhood category of issue no. 2 (1897) contains two illustrated legends about the mother of Mencius. In these two well-known stories, the wise woman moves house three times before finding a location that she deems suitable for her son’s upbringing; when her son plays truant from school, she cuts the cloth she had been weaving, rendering it useless, to make a point about never stopping a task midway. A third entry, “Several Pieces of Instructions on Motherhood” (母儀數則), published in no. 3 (1897), has been translated from Japanese. It teaches mothers how to take care of a newborn. One rule discourages co-sleeping and was perhaps one hundred years ahead of China’s economic conditions: co-sleeping remained commonplace in Chinese families during the twentieth century because of limited living space.

Math Problems, Chinese Style

Mixed fractions

Complex fractions. In The Children’s Educator: Mathematics Part II (蒙學報: 算學下), not before 1904. (Cotsen 75995)

Perhaps no other subject area presented more visible challenge to Chinese language and symbols at the end of the nineteenth century than mathematics. Chinese scripts were written in columns from top to bottom and from right to left. Arabic numerals had not been adopted yet, so the digits appeared in the form of Chinese characters from zero to nine. As the pages here demonstrate, it was an awkward business trying to transfer horizontal mathematical formulas to a vertically-oriented Chinese page. To make things more complicated, these early textbook writers decided to invert the position of numerator and denominator in a fraction, so that numerators were placed under the fraction bar.

Publisher

The cover of the first issue gives the publisher’s address as “Chaozong Fang” (朝宗坊) at the intersection of Sanmalu (三馬路, today’s Hankou Lu) and Wangping Street (望平街, today’s Shandong Zhong Lu) in Shanghai. A prominent location in the history of newspaper publishing in China, Wangping Street was once nicknamed “the street of newspaper offices” (Zhang) for the dozens of newspaper publishers that lined it. Today this neighborhood is home to the towering headquarters of Liberation Daily (or Jiefang Daily), the official daily newspaper of the Shanghai Committee of the Chinese Communist Party.

(View in a larger map. Approximate location of the publisher of The Children’s Educator in Shanghai, China, near Shandong Zhong Lu, once nicknamed “the street of newspaper offices.”)

Significant People

Liang Qichao (梁啟超1873-1929): a native of Xinhui (新會), Guangdong Province. Liang was listed as the fourth member of the Society for Enlightenment Education in the inauguration issue of The Children’s Educator (Nov. 1897). He did not contribute to the magazine, but it was in effect his brainchild and a close implementation of his ideas on educational reform. His writings on reform eventually helped usher in the Hundred Days of Reform of 1898, a frustrated movement that attempted to introduce profound changes to the Chinese education system and government.

Wang Kangnian (汪康年1860-1911): a native of Qiantang (錢塘), Zhejiang Province. Wang was board director (總董zongdong) of the magazine and listed as the third member of the Society for Enlightenment Education in the inauguration issue. He and Liang Qichao were cofounders of Current Affairs launched in 1896, which carried Liang’s “On Reform” series that inspired The Children’s Educator.

Wang Zhonglin (汪鐘霖1867-?): alias Ganqing (甘卿), a native of Wuxian (吳縣), Jiangsu Province. Wang was general manager (總理zongli) of the magazine and listed as the first member of the Society for Enlightenment Education in the inauguration issue; later named editor and distributor (1903, no. 1) of the magazine. He was also responsible for editing and printing The Children’s Educator series (蒙學叢書), which were included in the magazine or issued separately as monographs.

Zeng Guangquan (曾廣銓1871-1940): a native of Xiangxiang (湘鄉), Hunan Province. Zeng was the translator of Western-language materials into Chinese for the magazine and sixth member of the Society for Enlightenment Education. Grandson of the eminent General Zeng Guofan (曾國藩1811-1872), he apparently acquired foreign language skills while visiting Europe with his uncle and adoptive father Zeng Jize (曾紀澤1839-1890), who was an envoy sent to Britain and France by the Qing government.

Ye Yaoyuan (葉耀元): a native of Wuxian (吳縣), Jiangsu Province. Given the magazine’s special emphasis on providing illustrations to engage child readers and help them understand the text, it is worth mentioning Ye, who was listed as the main illustrator in the first issue. Many drawings are not credited, and it is unclear if Ye made those pictures as well. Ye’s drawings range from portraits of Confucius and his disciples to celestial charts. He also wrote math sections that were included in The Children’s Educator series.

]]>https://blogs.princeton.edu/cotsen/2014/07/the-childrens-educator-a-childrens-magazine-or-publishing-platypus-from-the-twilight-of-imperial-china/feed/0Packaging Picture Bookshttps://blogs.princeton.edu/cotsen/2014/06/packaging-picture-books/
https://blogs.princeton.edu/cotsen/2014/06/packaging-picture-books/#commentsFri, 27 Jun 2014 19:43:47 +0000http://blogs.princeton.edu/cotsen/?p=1397Continue reading →]]>Into every curator’s day some drudgery must fall and for the forseeable future, it’s going to be evaluating duplicates–which is actually more fun than it sounds.

Being an omnivorous kind of collector, Mr. Cotsen has always been prone to picking up multiple copies of books. When it had to be brought (very tactfully) to his attention that two (or more) copies of the same thing had been bought within months of each other, he would quip that at least he knew what he liked. Picture books from all over Europe between 1890 and 1950 are books he particularly likes. So looking through all these duplicate and variant copies means I get to be dazzled over and over again by the extraordinary creativity of artists during this period.

Part of the fun of not knowing what will be on the truck: it’s like being handed a box of chocolate truffles–you never know what you’ll bite into next. A week ago there was a run of striking Art Nouveaupicture books. What caught my eye in the four examples here was the progression from front cover to title page.

Below is volume 3 of Jugendland (1903), a periodical for boys and girls edited by Heinrich Moser and Ulrich Kohlbrunner that was published by the Swiss firm Künzli. Its binding design, the endpapers, and title page are all executed by illustrator and caricaturist Arpad Schmidhammer (1857-1921). He got his start contributing to annuals like Jugendland and Knecht Ruprecht, but is perhaps better known for his propagandistic picture books like Lieb Vaterland magst ruhig sein.

Front coverCotsen 18814

EndpapersCotsen 18814

Title pageCotsen 18814

The illustrations for the binding, endpapers and title page of Gartenlaube-Bilderbuch der deutscher Jugend (1902), on the other hand, are more uniform in style and subject than those for Jugendland. The picture on the front board is by Hermann Kaulbach (1846-1909), a well-known painter famous for idealized pictures of children. No credits are given for the endpapers or title vignette, but someone made sure that the theme of books and reading was repeated on the title page.

Front coverCotsen 91566

EndpapersCotsen 91566

Title pageCotsen 91566

Except for the goblin’s eyes peeking out of the “O,” the cloth boards of O Hastromanvi [The Goblin] (Prague: B. Koči, 1903) by Jožena Schwaigerová are conventional compared with the patterned endpapers. Both the binding design and endpapers contrast sharply with the rather severe title page, with the bold type cutting deeply into the thick paper. Whoever drew the repeat of frogs and pearls is not identified, so perhaps it was also the work of the Bohemian illustrator Hanus Schwaiger (1854-1909) who did the delightfully creepy pictures for the story.

Front coverCotsen 44194

EndpapersCotsen 44194

Title pageCotsen 44194

There’s a frog prince on the front board of Ernst Dannheiser’s Miaulina: Ein Märchenbuch für kleine Kinder (Cologne: Schaffstein, 1902), but he hasn’t got any pearls on his crown. Illustrator Julius Diez (1870-1953) let his imagination run wild in this collection of fairy tales. In the book, the tales are told to an industrious little girl by the cat Miaulina, who is shown with a satchel over one shoulder. There is the repeat of the pine tree men and red squirrels on the endpapers, an added illustrated title page where Miaulina eyes little mice watering the garden, and title page dominated by the figure of a fantastically dressed Moorish slave boy, who bears Miaulina on a pillow amidst a riot of exotic birds. And I left out the illustrated vignettes of the poor veteran mouse begging in the cold and the jaunty little fellow riding a rooster, not to mention the frame of mice, beetles and weird rootmen enclosing the table of contents!

Front coverCotsen 150184

EndpapersCotsen 150184

Decorative title pageCotsen 150184

Title pageCotsen 150184

These exuberant picture books may be over the top, but their packaging gives contemporary bindings of laminated boards, or sober cloth backstrip and boards covered in a contrasting color, a run for their money…

]]>https://blogs.princeton.edu/cotsen/2014/06/packaging-picture-books/feed/0Curator’s Choice: Playing Old Maid with Hunca Munca and her Friendshttps://blogs.princeton.edu/cotsen/2014/06/curators-choice-playing-old-maid-with-hunca-munca-and-her-friends/
https://blogs.princeton.edu/cotsen/2014/06/curators-choice-playing-old-maid-with-hunca-munca-and-her-friends/#commentsFri, 13 Jun 2014 20:56:54 +0000http://blogs.princeton.edu/cotsen/?p=1368Continue reading →]]>When I was little, playing Old Maid with a specially designed set of cards beat a standard deck hands down. The peculiar characters (caricatures, really) were much more satisfying than the bland flat faces of the kings, queens and jacks in the old Bicycle deck, with the cupids peddling for dear life on the red or blue backs…

It never occurred to me when my daughter was little to make her a unique deck of Old Maid cards, maybe because cards were not all that high on the list of fun things to do until Five Crowns came along. Designing the twenty-odd pairs of characters would have a bit more than I was up to because repeated requests to draw the beautiful Chicken of the Sea mermaid strained my artistic abilities to the breaking point!

However, some children are lucky enough to know adults who draw well enough to craft toys and games for them. Sometimes lucky curators are offered rare specimens that survived against the odds. This little set of Schwarzer Peter cards is just one such find. “Schwarzer Peter”—that is, “Black Peter”–is the name that Old Maid goes by in German, Danish, Swedish, Hungarian, and Finnish. The card with Black Peter is the hot potato that all the players try to get rid of as quickly as possible so it won’t be in their hands at the end of the game. In this particular set, the Black Peter is depicted offensively as a black rag doll instead of the more usual chimney sweep.

inprocess item 6541473

The set has twenty-seven, not fifty-two cards, and seems to be complete because it fits perfectly in the blue box with the illustrated title label that reads in translation: “This game of Black Peter was painted for her dear friends Ernst and Anneliese Grossenbacher in St. Gall.” It is signed Gertrud Lendorff, who just might be the Swiss art historian from Basel (1900-1981). The title label depicts a black baby doll and Lendorff’s model might have been a Heubach bisque character doll. She redrew the same doll on the card with the caption “Der Schwarze Peterli! Nicht der Schwarze Peter!” [The little Black Peter! Not the Black Peter!]. It is an opprobrious caricature with unnaturally bright red lips. But unlike some Heubach black baby dolls, it wears what looks like a knitted onesie instead of some spurious form of “native dress.”

The cards cannot be earlier than the 1930s: the pair with the Union Jack in the upper left hand corners consist of Pamela and “Margaret Rose aus England.” Margaret Rose is a little girl in a blue coat and hat with a green scarf, who must be the late Princess Margaret (1930-2002), Queen Elizabeth II’s sister.

For the most part, the cards depict all kinds of toys made of porcelain, clay, celluloid, and wood, such as Hansli and the matryoshka doll Tatyiana and her five daughters shown below.

A famous character from children’s books also makes an appearance here: Beatrix Potter’s Hunca Munca from The Tale of Two Bad Mice, identified only as “nach einem Englischen Kinderbuch,” that is, “from an English children’s book.” It’s amusing that the illustrations of Hunca Munca Lendorff redrew are the ones where this bad little mouse was behaving well relatively well.

Were the little Grossenbachers for whom Lendorff made the cards reading The Tale of Two Bad Mice in German translation? Or was Lendorff introducing them to a childhood favorite of hers? The cards don’t provide any clues about the circumstances in which they were made or how they were received, but they are testimony to Potter’s appeal outside her homeland.

The exhibition will feature a diverse array of toys and picture books focused around a central theme of all things constructive. Architects and architecture, builders and buildings, prints and cards and books and blocks! The items featured in the exhibit hail from 10 countries, across 3 continents, and nearly 275 years (from 1740 to the present day). Join us in celebrating the rich history of the connection between children’s books and toys with building and architecture.

Without spoiling too much of what will be available in the gallery, I though you might appreciate seeing some of the building that went into getting the exhibit ready (sorry, couldn’t help myself). Some of the items pictured below didn’t make it into the final show. You’ll have to come in on Thursday, May 29th to see what made it in. . .

]]>https://blogs.princeton.edu/cotsen/2014/05/new-exhibition-coming-this-thursday-may-29th-2014/feed/0The Importance of Readinghttps://blogs.princeton.edu/cotsen/2014/05/the-importance-of-reading/
https://blogs.princeton.edu/cotsen/2014/05/the-importance-of-reading/#commentsMon, 05 May 2014 13:00:13 +0000http://blogs.princeton.edu/cotsen/?p=1340Continue reading →]]>With reading period upon us I thought that it might be appropriate to remind the diligent young minds of Princeton University about the importance of minding their books.

Dean & Son, the prodigious 19th Century London publishing firm, brings us a very short story about a certain ill-behaved Sam Weld who never quite learns his lesson. The story comes from one of Dean & Son’s “English Struwelpeters”, a series of cloth books inspired by the smash hit moral tale Der Struwwelpeter by the German author Heinrich Hoffman. From the last 2 leaves of Little Miss Consequence comes the cautionary tale: “The Naughty Boy Who Destroyed His Books”.

Good luck studying! Remember to treat your books well and read . . . or you might become a swineherd!

]]>https://blogs.princeton.edu/cotsen/2014/05/the-importance-of-reading/feed/0School Days in Children’s Books…https://blogs.princeton.edu/cotsen/2014/04/1299/
https://blogs.princeton.edu/cotsen/2014/04/1299/#commentsFri, 18 Apr 2014 16:07:56 +0000http://blogs.princeton.edu/cotsen/?p=1299Continue reading →]]>One of the interesting aspects about cataloging children’s books is that you get to see quite an amazing variety of materials–“children’s books” includes fiction, stories, poetry, history, as well as books about history, science, technology, nature, animals, birds, insects, not to mention illustrated books of all shapes and sizes, and books meant to educate children, “juveniles” and what we would now term “young adults”. Some scholars don’t really consider instructional books and materials to be children’s “literature” per se, but these non-classroom educational books and materials constitute an important part of the Cotsen collection too–along with certain kinds of games, and ephemera… The list goes on and on…

When cataloging, I often encounter a dizzying array of material on a semi-random basis, since books are generally cataloged in the order that they’ve been acquired by a curator or collector. The sheer variety is part of the fun. But sometimes, I serendipitously encounter books on similar subjects that seem to complement each other or to suggest connections that wouldn’t have occurred to me if only looking at one alone. Just this week, I saw several educational books about teaching children that also pictured children themselves in the accompanying illustrations. Let’s take a look…

Frontispiece: The Boys’ School, or Traits of Character in Early Life / by Miss Sandham (London: John Souter, 1821?) Cotsen acc. no. 6100564

The engraved frontispiece of The Boys’ School, or Traits of Character in Early Life (undated but published about 1821) shows a well-appointed (and generally quite orderly!) school-room–notice all the books and several globes on the shelves in the background. A well-dressed boy expounds an astronomical problem to a smiling master sitting at his desk in front of a small class. Note the compass the boy holds, the telescope, and the other astronomy, navigation, or time-keeping paraphernalia in the foreground too. Looking at the illustration, it’s not clear to me how much attention the other boys are paying to the recitation though, but at least they’re in their seats! Generally, a scene of enlightened decorum is effectively presented.

The frontispiece pretty much speaks for itself, but the text it accompanies tells us that this is a private school for a “limited number of boys,” and that Mr. Morton, the master was “good-natured” with a “steadiness of temper.”

It’s worth pointing out that, while the process of education is depicted in the frontispiece, the real object of this book is the moral education of its readers, as the author makes clear in her preface. The main character is one of the “children of affliction”–an orphan named William Falkner of small size and weak body–who is at first ridiculed by other students for his “personal defects” at the school, but who shows his mental and moral strength in the course of the story via his accomplishments. In many respects, this presentation is characteristic of English “moral tales” for children of its era.

Moving back in time, Elementary Dialogues for the Improvement of Youth (published in 1790 as the first English version, of Joachim Campe’s Kleine Seelenlehre für Kinder) is presented in the form of a dialogue between a tutor and his students. While generally benevolent, the tutor employs some educational techniques not exactly in accord with current practices today. At one point, for instance, he appears at the beginning of the day “with a knotted handkerchief in his hand; and without speaking, strikes each of the boys with it.” This isn’t as punishment for misbehavior though, but to demonstrate cause and effect to the boys in a way they’ll remember.

One of the illustrations depicts what I first thought was a studious boy in a library or study–maybe a model scholar?. There’s no caption to key a response, but notice the books, including one open on the desk before the boy. Take a look for yourself and see what you think!

Yet the accompanying text tells a different story. The tutor’s narrative describes the boy as a “poor blockhead at his wit’s end.” Unable to do a merchant’s apprenticeship text in writing and arithmetic, the boy “struck his forehead to correct himself for want of diligence … having profited little by education and…lost his time in running about and at play.”

As the text makes explicit, the tutor first shows this illustration to his students–as he does with the fifteen others presented in the book–and then elicits responses from them as he explains the context–which is immediately apparent to the boys in this case, who “read” the illustration more correctly than I did! Perhaps the moral here–at least for catalogers–is that you can’t tell a story by looking at one picture!

In some books, the illustrations make visible in graphical terms what the author is trying to describe in the text–they play a secondary or supporting role. In other books, such as toybooks by Caldecott, the illustrations ironically comment upon, or even undercut, the text; they can even become the primary narrative element. (And, to be honest, in some children’s books, there’s little relation between text and illustration; the illustrations are essentially decorative.) In Elementary Dialogues, text and illustration work together, the pictures intended to “make sensible” to children the “ideas” that the author wants to present. This method is meant to leave “the pleasure of discovering [the ideas] to the children,” and is consistent with the theories that Locke presented for using illustrations and objects for children’s education.

Having had all this moral and conceptual education, it’s time for a break, don’t you agree?

And so apparently do the students shown in the engraved frontispiece of Christmas Holidays: a Poem Written for the Amusement & Instruction of All Good Masters & Misses in the Known World by Tommy Tell-Truth, B.A., published circa 1767 (some titles are too good to shorten!).

Here we see an eighteenth-century English class on the verge of their Christmas break. A benevolent-looking master gives out a prize, or treat, to one student, perhaps a star pupil? The rest of the students look like they’re about to explode with delight. (Remember that feeling yourself when in school?) One boy skates out of the picture at lower right, school-bag and hat in hand; other students stand and cheer (Huzza!) or chatter amongst themselves–a sense of festive jollity prevails over order or decorum. Compare this scene with that depicted in the 1820’s Boy’s School frontispiece above, in particular the number of students, their clothing and the general classroom decor. (We’ve moved from the world of Jane Austen back to the world of Tom Jones, or so it seems to me.)

Detail of frontispiece: Christmas Holidays (Cotsen acc. no. 6143802)

Of particular interest to me are the boys shown on the left side of the engraving. In the foreground, one boy stuffs his school-bag (his back completely turned to the master) while another sprawls on the floor, holding his stomach in laughter while clutching a paper, perhaps his term grades? Meanwhile, two boys feed the fire with what appears to be the master’s birch rod and disciplinary paddle. The whole scene is one of blissful abandon and festive misrule, not inappropriate considering that another engraving in the book, titled “Twelfth Night,” depicts the festivity of a group of carousing adults, some apparently in their cups.

An illustration from a Cotsen Library book was featured on the cover of the Fall 2013 issue of RBM: Journal of Rare Books, Manuscripts, and Cultural Heritage, issued by RBMS, the Rare Book and Manuscript Section of ALA.

This black-and-white reproduction was based on a hand-colored engraving of a children’s home geography party, printed in Dean & Munday’s The Little Traveller, or, A Sketch of the Various Nations of the World (ca. 1830).

Cotsen Library had used a color reproduction of this engraving on the poster and website for its September, 2013 conference in Princeton entitled, “Putting the Figure on the Map: Imagining Sameness and Difference for Children,” as noted in the text below, taken from the credits page of RBM.

“The Party,” hand-colored wood engraving from: The Little Traveller, or, A Sketch of the Various Nations of the World: Representing the Costumes, and Describing the Manners and Peculiarities of the Inhabitants: Embellished with Fifteen Beautifully Coloured Engravings / by J. Steerwell. (Lon­don: Dean and Munday, Threadneedle-Street, [ca. 1830]). The copy of the book from which this illustration is taken is in the Cotsen Children’s Library, part of Princeton University Library’s Rare Books & Special Collections Department.

This illustration was also reproduced on the website and print brochure for a Cotsen Library conference at Princeton on September 11-13, 2013, tided. “Putting the Figure on the Map: Imagining Sameness and Difference for Children.” The conference explored how children’s books were important vehicles for the expression of senses of national identity during the nineteenth century, a time when the world seemed to shrink, thanks to improved communi­cations and transportation that facilitated travel, whether for commerce, conquest or leisure. Similarly the wonders of the world could be brought into the home via photography, maps, travel writing, and fiction. The representation of foreign lands inevitably required the illus­tration and description of their residents, which gave rise to a rich repository of colorful im­ages of diversity. Through a tangle of national types, stereotypes, and archetypes, children’s books shaped discourse as much as they reflected mainstream adult culture.

Exploring these themes, and others, this interdisciplinary Cotsen conference featured presentations that drew on the approaches of imagology, history, anthropology, psychology, and literary criticism, to discuss modes of expression arising that either targeted children, within or without the classroom, or appropriated discourses for them, to present competing, complimentary or contradictory images of foreign nations.

]]>https://blogs.princeton.edu/cotsen/2014/04/cotsen-in-print/feed/0It’s the first of April! Time to wash the lions again…https://blogs.princeton.edu/cotsen/2014/04/its-the-first-of-april-time-to-wash-the-lions-again/
https://blogs.princeton.edu/cotsen/2014/04/its-the-first-of-april-time-to-wash-the-lions-again/#commentsTue, 01 Apr 2014 20:24:43 +0000http://blogs.princeton.edu/cotsen/?p=1229Continue reading →]]>In the 1680s antiquarian John Aubrey was the first Englishman to mention the observance of April Fool’s Day. He stated that it was celebrated all over Germany, but folklorists assume that the holiday was imported from France, where seems to have been well-established by the 1650s. They also speculate that this mock-holiday arose to fill the gap as the tradition of sanctioning all kinds of misrule during the Christmas holiday season waned (think the cruel jokes perpetrated on Shakespeare’s Malvolio during Twelfth Night). In comparison, April Fool’s was a more civilized occasion for mischief-making, being confined to one day and the only kind of horseplay authorized was to trick others into making public spectacles of themselves.

In the eighteenth-century England, perpetrating hoaxes upon the unwary was ubiquitous on April 1, if we can believe contemporary writers. Age and class came into play because children were allowed to try and deceive adults and members of a higher class could impose on someone of a lower class. Making an April fool of someone was not below the likes of Jonathan Swift, who in 1713 sat up late with some friends cooking up a prank. Convincing someone to go on a wild goose chase (or sleeveless errand as it is also called) for things that didn’t exist, like pigeon’s milk or the biography of Eve’s mother, was a favorite ploy.

The first description of an April Fool’s sleeveless errand was described in a notice in the April 2nd 1698 issue of Dawk’s News-Letter: “Several persons were sent to the Tower Ditch [i.e. the Tower of London’s moat] to see the Lions washed.” One of the city’s great tourist destinations, visitors since the reign of Elizabeth I went the royal menagerie to gawk at caged lions, tigers, bears, elephants, etc. The lions were kept in the barbican called the Bulwark, which was renamed the Lion Tower. The fast-talking trickster would convince his gullible victim that every year on April 1 the lions were taken down to the moat for a bath. All one had to do to enjoy the spectacle was enter by the White Gate. Of course, there was no such gate or any wet lions… In the nineteenth century, the merry sometimes distributed fake tickets of admission.

In honor of the day, here are two accounts of washing the lions from two eighteenth century children’s books, which may be unknown in the literature on the holiday (they are reproduced from the British Library copies on Eighteenth-Century Collections On-Line). The first comes from the last chapter of Travels of Tom Thumb Over England and Wales (1746), where the intrepid little narrator confesses to being taken in by the story of the lions’ public grooming (he also mentions that the most common visitors to the Tower lions are pregnant women, who want to know the sex of their babies!) .

The second, more substantial description of washing the lions comes from chapter 8 of Richard Johnson’s The Picture Exhibition (1783). Here the narrator is a school boy, telling about the picture he drew of an April Fool’s prank in progress. He clearly disapproves of the scene he records and there is something distasteful about the watermen’s gratuitous cruelty towards the poor fellow from the country. While the tone of the narrator’s lecture about appropriate behaviour is too prosy for modern tastes, it should be said in his defense that he was expressing quite enlightened views at a time when blood sports were tolerated and jokes based on highly offensive gender and class stereotypes could be told without embarassment.

P.S. Princeton has a plethora of lions to wash, if anyone on campus wants to revive the tradition…

A pleasant little amateur manuscript has arrived from England (item no. 6814899). As the cover indicates, this piece was probably created as a Christmas gift for Cecil by his father in 1921. Cecil, we can guess, must have been quite young considering the picture book format of the work. Although it’s immediately recognizable that the author is an amateur story teller and bookmaker, these qualities only add to the item’s charm.

It’s a funny story, involving chance encounters, romance, and upward mobility. The manuscript is bound, colored, and written by hand. If you look closely, you can see that the author first wrote in pencil and then traced his own hand (varying often) in black ink. Most impressively, there are 21 humorous and talented illustrations (including the cover, title-page, and 19 leaves) each one painstakingly hand colored with watercolor and ink.

With the scene set, let’s let the work speak for itself:

title-page

Cute story right?

But there’s one other interesting and mysterious feature of the manuscript. It’s bookplate:

Pasted into the inside front cover facing the title page, this bookplate answers some questions about the history of this manuscript and raises a few more. After a little bit of research I was able to piece together that the acronym stands for Great Western Railway and that Wargrave refers to a village in Berkshire county, southeast England. The now defunct G.W.R. (founded 1833, nationalized at the end of 1947, becoming part of the Western Region of British Railways) opened a railway station in the small town of Wargrave in 1900. Though the platform still remains today, The station building was demolished in 1988.

At some point between 1921 and 1947, Cecil or someone he knew must have given the manuscript over to the station (though it’s still unclear what kind of library the station might have had if it even had one).

So why would Wargrave train station have this item?

It might be more than just its train centered theme. If you look closely at the second page (the first illustration after the title-page), you can just make out “GWR” written at the top of one of the papers on Rumples’ office wall. I think it’s safe for us to assume that this close affinity with and knowledge of the GWR (and the railroad goods office in general) probably points to this story being somewhat autobiographical. This, at least, would explain why the author’s family would want to donate the item to the station.

My flimsy guess is that the author himself probably worked in the goods office at Wargrave station. At some point, he must have fantasized about kicking his boss in the bum, getting a boat and a bike, and providing a better home for his children (not uncommon fantasies I’m sure). At the very least, a talented and doting father created a fantastic gift for his son Cecil during the Christmas of 1921. Now, 93 years later, we are pleased to have had the manuscript journey through many hands and across the pond to us.

]]>https://blogs.princeton.edu/cotsen/2014/03/the-romance-of-rumples-rig-railwayman/feed/0House of Cards? Or, the Case of the Queen of Hearts and Her Tarts…https://blogs.princeton.edu/cotsen/2014/03/house-of-cards-or-the-case-of-the-queen-of-hearts-and-her-tarts/
https://blogs.princeton.edu/cotsen/2014/03/house-of-cards-or-the-case-of-the-queen-of-hearts-and-her-tarts/#commentsTue, 11 Mar 2014 19:02:21 +0000http://blogs.princeton.edu/cotsen/?p=1059Continue reading →]]>‘You’re nothing but a pack of cards!’ –Alice

Alice’s assertion, at the end of the climactic confrontation with the Queen of Hearts in the trial scene in Alice in Wonderland, dramatically brings the proceedings to an close… But it also highlights one of the many sources of humor in the book: Alice’s nemesis in the court—the Queen of Hearts – is indeed nothing but a playing card animated by Lewis Carroll’s imagination into a comically malevolent personality, whose favorite utterance seems to be “Off with her/his head”! Tenniel’s classic illustrations seems to perfectly complement Carroll’s presentation of the Queen.
And remember, Alice is not even the accused in the trial! She’s merely called as witness in the trial of the Knave of Heart for stealing the tarts, as per the nursery rhyme, which Carroll incorporates into his story, as an indictment read by the White Rabbit:

The Queen of Hearts
She made some tarts,
All on a summer’s day;
The Knave of Hearts
He stole the tarts,
And took them clean away.

The Queen is depicted as a comical stereotype, a despotic harridan brought to life, a “blind and aimless Fury,” as Carroll himself once described her.1 The King and Knave (the latter more familiar to us now perhaps as the “Jack”) are similarly depicted as individualized “three dimensional” comic personalities, and it seems as though the other royal members of the court—the “face cards”—are too.

“Why, they’re only a pack of cards, after all. I needn’t be afraid of them!”

But Carroll’s text describes the number cards as animated playing cards—“oblong and flat” who fall face down at the approach of the Queen—and Tenniel correspondingly pictures the gardeners like the cards they’re comprised of, essentially animated walking-and-talking sandwich-boards with heads, legs, and arms attached.

As such, I think they serve to foreground the more important characters: the Queen, King, Jack, Alice, etc. They really are the sort of “cardboard-cutout” characters that literary critics tend to mock! They also serve to remind readers of something we’re always implicitly aware of—that all these “characters” are playing cards brought to life—and this is another reason why their antics seem so comical. The inanimate, animated—objects and animals brought to life and imbued with human qualities, even if satiric ones. This provided a tried and true literary device in children’s literature long before Carroll.

“the whole pack rose up into the air, and came flying down upon her…”

Yet when Alice blurts out: “You’re nothing but a pack of cards!”, the whole house of cards comes tumbling down. The court deconstructs back into a pack of cards, raining down on Alice’ head, a moment of humor which is, however, not without some anxiety, as Tenniel brilliantly depicts. Amid the confusion, the non-playing card Wonderland characters in court—animals comprising the erstwhile jury—are pictured as fully reverted back into unfrocked frogs, mice, and birds. And a storm of cards swirls toward Alice, whose face shows clearly that she is not amused, all set against a darkly cross-hatched backdrop calling to mind an ominous storm (a Kansas tornado perhaps?).

Again, this depiction seems to perfectly match Carroll’s language, and perhaps extends it, thereby deepening the presentation of a funny, yet scary scene, one final vision before the sometimes-nightmarish midsummer-night’s dream finally yields back to bucolic daytime reality:

At this the whole pack rose up into the air, and came flying down upon her: she gave a little scream, half of fright and half of anger, and tried to beat them off, and found herself lying on the bank, with her head in the lap of her sister, who was gently brushing away some dead leaves that had fluttered down from the trees upon her face.

A “scream, half of fright,” flying objects around Alice’s head and face which she “tries to beat off”… This could be right out of Poe—or Hitchcock. (The Birds, anyone?). The sudden deconstruction of the Queen and her court back into a pack of cards that briefly assails Alice before falling onto the floor like dead leaves fluttering down is a terrifically dramatic moment. But in a flash, it’s all over and she’s back on the calm riverbank—all’s well.

Queen of Hearts, as conceptualized by the Salzburg Marionette Theatre(reproduced with permission)

The visual aspect of the this reverse-metamorphosis was dramatically realized in a production of Alice in Wonderland that I saw not long ago by the Salzburg Marionette Theatre (where the Queen was presented as an overt caricature of Queen Victoria, something Carroll wouldn’t have done but which was a funny adaptation for a modern audience). All the cards, as all the characters were “brought to life” on-stage by marionettes, adding a nicely surreal effect to the comical, ever-so-slightly-nightmarish fantasy.

When puppet Alice uttered the line, “You’re nothing but a pack of cards!”, the whole pack exploded, and Alice was deluged by a literal rain of playing cards falling on her and all over the stage—a perfect dramatization of Tenniel’s drawing, yet I think one more dramatic than a still illustration could possibly provide, no matter how striking. It’s one thing to read a description, even a vivid one, or to see an image, even one as evocative as Tenniel’s, but it’s quite another to see actual kinetic movement and tumbling items cascading down before your eyes. The effect isn’t “better”—it’s just more inescapable and dramatic to a modern viewer—at least this one.

The Queen & the Knave (The Queen of Hearts and her Damson Tarts. Dean & Son, between 1857 & 1865. CTSN item #6040014)

I was recently reminded of that staging—and of course Carroll’s story—while cataloging a “toybook” version of the story about the Queen of Hearts and her tarts: The Queen of Hearts and the Damson Tarts, published sometime between 1857 and 1865 in London by Dean & Son. (Coincidentally—or maybe not—Carroll’s Alice was first published in 1865. Hmmm…) This illustrated eight-page paperback (somewhat like a comic book in format) begins with the first stanza of the “Queen of Hearts” nursery rhyme and then elaborates the story through the combination of text and illustration that characterizes the toybook format. (Damson by the way, is a type of sweet plum, popular for jam-making in the 19th century—I didn’t know that either and had to look it up.) Note the toybook depiction of the Queen. Here, she appears quite benevolent, and even slightly dishy, in contrast to either of the other versions we’ve looked at so far.

The Queen “sent out her cards about to every King and Queen, / Who were in the pack, in red or black, and always to be seen.”

The Queen makes her tarts “to feast a chosen few” and sends “her cards” out to invite all the other kings and queens to a noble feast—a play on words reinforced by the accompanying illustration. (Remember, in those days people sent out invitation cards and left calling cards when visiting.) As in Tenniel’s later rendition, we see the combination of “three-dimensional” royalty and “sandwich-board” card-like courtiers. But for the most part, the characters are pictured as being “3D,” even though they retain the trappings and symbolic accoutrements of playing cards—the Knave’s poleaxe, for instance. Otherwise, what’s he otherwise doing with that in the court, especially as a suspected thief and a defendant?

I wonder if perhaps Carroll or Tenniel saw this depiction—or one like it—or if this playing card/realized character distinction was part of the received idea for this basic story that was then taken and reconceptualized. The nursery rhyme characters are, after all, based on playing cards: the King and Queen of Hearts, etc.

“Your Majesty… Your cat it must sure be.”

Note the thievish Knave lurking in the background behind the oblivious Queen in the first illustration. He’s depicted as a pretty disreputable—dare I say, knavish-looking—character in this version. He’s the thief—as readers, we know that from the rhyme—but when called upon to produce the tarts (which he has already eaten in this version, as we later read/see), what does he do? He blames the King’s cat!

“Your majesty,” said he, [the Knave]
I think I know who is the foe,
Your cat it sure must be:
He looked at me quite guiltily
And ran away full speed…”

And the accompanying illustration shows the cat of course high-tailing it away—imagine a cat doing that when in trouble! The King doesn’t buy the Knave’s lame excuse—“Oh Knave for shame!… Do cats eat damson tarts?”—and he rages before the court.

“To hide his sin, his mouth and chin / To wipe, he did forget”

The Knave is eventually indicted by his own jam-stained chin, and the King commands that he confess on “bended knee.” (Unlike the nursery rhyme version, there are no tarts for the knave to bring back in this telling.) But remember that friendly-looking Queen? She has other, distantly non-merciful, ideas: “Oh sire…He surely ought to die.”

In this version, the King rules, not the Queen who railroads the proceedings in Alice, and he opts for “mercy”—the Knave is to be beaten, as per the nursery rhyme. The text states this, but there’s no corresponding illustration of the actual beating, only one of the cowering Knave. The effect is to lighten the cautionary tone considerably, I think–illustration predominates over the text in terms of imparting overall meaning to us. Then, with justice dispensed, the king decides that a party is in order:

“The company felt such delight, they danced til it was morning quite.”

The King did then for music call,–said he, “We now will have a Ball.”
The company felt such delight, the danced till it was morning quite.

The story thus concludes with an all-nighter celebration, rather than pandemonium, as “Queen of Hearts episode” in Alice. The accompanying illustration, labeled “the King’s Grand Ball,” perfectly captures this festive-comic resolution–excluding the Knave though, if you look closely.

Having let the knave eat the stolen tarts, this version also does away with his repentance—and, of course, with his restitution of the stolen goods; the lines above take the place of the last three lines of the nursery rhyme, which have mysteriously disappeared:

The Knave of Hearts
Brought back the tarts,
And vowed he’d steal no more.

So with the same basic story line, we’ve seen essentially three different resolutions, if we factor in the combined effect of text and illustration: 1) restitution and repentance; 2) beating of the malefactor; 3) dancing and celebration.

First page of the New Story of the Queen of Hearts — leaf laid down to front wrapper (Dean & Co., between 1847-1854. CTSN 1738)

An apparently earlier toybook version of the Queen of Hearts story, published between 1847-1854 by Dean & Co., features most of the same illustrations (omitting the smaller insets), and essentially the same text (the Queen is “troubled” instead of “ireful,” etc.). Titled New Story of the Queen of Hearts, it provides a variation of the ending with the Knave being beaten. The last illustration in this version shows the cowering Knave before his beating, and the last lines of text are here:

…mercy shall guide my will,
So let the thief be beaten.”

The lines ending the Damson Tarts have been deleted altogether and the illustration showing the festive dancing scene has been moved—somewhat incoherently, in terms of the accompanying text, or even the plot itself—to the front pastedown, above the beginning of the text: “The Queen of Hearts once made some tarts…” But when is this dancing celebration supposed to take place? And what’s its cause in this retelling? Things don’t really add up logically, but illogical or inconsistent plotting doesn’t really destroy delightful aspects of a children’s story as long as it’s indeed entertaining–and perhaps also instructive in a cautionary way.

As first, I was tempted to think that the New Story might be a one-time publication variation, or even a book whose leaves were rebound, a not-infrequent occurrence in old toy books—cheaply-bound, inexpensive items, often “read to death” by child readers. But book in hand, I can see that this toybook is still intact, as issued—the first, unnumbered leaf and leaf number eight are laid down to the original wrappers, which are still attached to each other along the spine edge.

And another toybook variation—an undated French-language version probably dating from about 1850, possibly published by Dean too—essentially duplicates not only the New Story’s version of the story but also the page layout and design, the decorative bordered boxes into which caption title text is set, and also provides a text that’s a pretty close French translation—almost word-for-word. Again, the text ends with the Knave being beaten:

It’s hard to know why both books end this way—with the Knave being punished with a beating—instead of with the restitution and repentance from the nursery rhyme version. Perhaps the toy book maker simply didn’t plan well and ran out of space in the preset eight-page format? (This sometimes happens.) Or, more likely, perhaps, the message for children was intended to be one frightening them away from theft by playing up the consequences, both in language and illustration? There may well be other explanations too. Beatings, or similar punishments, were quite common features in stories about bad children, as shocking as this seems to us now in a story aimed at children readers.

The story of the Queen of Hearts and her tarts was popular fodder for other illustrated children’s versions too. One of the best known is Caldecott’s The Queen of Hearts, first published by Routledge in 1881, and later reissued by Warne (which is the copy the Cotsen Library has). This book offers an interesting interplay of the text and interpretative illustrations, as well as an example of how book design can affect meaning in an illustrated book. Caldecott reproduces the classic nursery rhyme text verbatim, but his own illustrations and overall page design both shape—and indeed, modify—a reader’s reception of this text. Caldecott provides his characteristically gently satiric take on a “story,” via visual elements.

Caldecott’s Queen of Hearts

His cover design sets the tone: against a background of playing card on the ground, a comically wild archer of Diamonds (perhaps a youth?) apparently shoots at Hearts balloons, while a foppish attendant of the Queen of Hearts protests. The Queen is depicted partly within a bordered a frame making her look like a two-dimensional playing card—she’s both within the scene and outside it, an interesting narrative ploy. Is she a person? A playing card? Or both at once?

The Knave’s thievery is also depicted with Caldecott’s gently satiric humor—the Knave is another real court dandy, shown caught “in the act” in Caldecott’s depiction. But how is he discovered this time? Take a look! The cat is witness, and Caldecott’s illustrations show the loyal cat ratting out the Knave…no doubt strictly in the interests of justice!

While adding no new text, Caldecott thus creates a much-enhanced role for the King’s cat via illustration, a role he expands even further with the line drawings accompanying the color wood-engravings in this book. The cat—which is not mentioned at all in the nursery rhyme and which is merely the Knave’s absurd object of blame in Damson Hearts—is turned into the eyes and ears of the King and an active agent of justice, as you can see in the composite view below of Caldecott’s line-drawings on four separate pages—no text is really needed!

Caldecott’s cat: Adding to the “story” with graphic elements.

“And beat the Knave full sore…”Here, for illustrative purposes, the punishment of the Knave, barely noticeable in the background of the scene as Caldecott presents it, has been magnified and added below the dancing scene.

Following the nursery rhyme text, Caldecott shows the Knave being beaten by the King of Hearts—but here the act takes place in the background, with color illustration shifting the focus to the rest of the royals happily dancing the night away. (Note: the Queen of Hearts is dancing with the King of Clubs, while her consort administers punishment.) Illustration reinterprets the text, lightens the tone considerably, and adds a festive slant. Celebration is foregrounded, while punishment and severity are pushed into the background.

The Knave brings back the tarts, but Caldecott shows him giving them to celebrating little royal children of all four suits, not feasting adults as in Damson Tarts. So restitution is made—and crowned children get a treat, an ending with obvious appeal to child readers! (“Plumb-cake for ever, Huzza!,” as John Newbery put it.)

Interestingly, Caldecott also depicts liveried court-servants and heralds as playing-card, sandwich-board wearers—but unlike Tenniel, he provides them with bodies underneath. This certainly seems like some sort of visual allusion to Carroll’s work and Tenniel’s illustrations to me, which wouldn’t be a too surprising, since Alice in Wonderland was still hugely popular in the 1880s and 1890s, as it remains to this day.

]]>https://blogs.princeton.edu/cotsen/2014/03/house-of-cards-or-the-case-of-the-queen-of-hearts-and-her-tarts/feed/0New Gallery Publication on its Way!https://blogs.princeton.edu/cotsen/2014/02/new-gallery-publication-on-its-way/
https://blogs.princeton.edu/cotsen/2014/02/new-gallery-publication-on-its-way/#commentsThu, 06 Feb 2014 17:55:52 +0000http://blogs.princeton.edu/cotsen/?p=1035Continue reading →]]>On Valentine’s Day, copies of our new pamphlet, “On the Road in the Cotsen Children’s Library” will be available free of charge to all gallery visitors.

What’s it about?

It’s about the sound of keys jingling in your pocket, putting the pedal to the metal, and moving forward. It’s a tribute to the wheel and to illustrators who captured the joy of being on the open road and going places. To whet your appetite, here are some of the pictures from the crazy mixed-up files of the compiler that didn’t make the final cut…

]]>https://blogs.princeton.edu/cotsen/2014/02/new-gallery-publication-on-its-way/feed/0Suggested Menu Item for a Super Bowl Party from a Children’s Book ??????https://blogs.princeton.edu/cotsen/2014/01/suggested-menu-item-for-a-monster-super-bowl-party/
https://blogs.princeton.edu/cotsen/2014/01/suggested-menu-item-for-a-monster-super-bowl-party/#commentsFri, 31 Jan 2014 22:06:37 +0000http://blogs.princeton.edu/cotsen/?p=1013Continue reading →]]>Overindulgence doesn’t end with the 12th day of Christmas, it wraps up with the obligatory spread on Super Bowl Sunday. To usher out the holiday season, we offer up a seasonal story with a recipe in the spirit of Kate Greenaway Award winner Helen Cooper’s Pumpkin Soup picture book trilogy.

We can’t vouch for the veracity of The Wonderful History of the Great Sausage (New York: James Miller, ca. 1880). But it seems likely that it was translated from an illustrated German-language children’s book or Die Fliegende Blatter, like Schwind’s “Trials of Sir Winter” featured in the previous post. And it is our considered opinion that the charcuterie in the story must have been a hard smoked sausage if it required a saw to slice.

A recipe from an extremely tattered 1967 printing of The Joy of Cooking follows, just in case one of our loyal followers will be inspired to substitute a Wunderwurst for Buffalo wings at their spread for Super Bowl XLIX… The recipe will have to be multiplied many times to produce a 1005-yard sausage weighing eight thousand, eight hundred and eighty eight pound, but maybe someone from the world of competitive sausage making can be enlisted to lend a hand. This is surely a manageable project in comparison to surpassing the the longest sausage on record (five miles long but of ordinary girth).

Grind the cooked potatoes once and add to the meat. Work together until well mixed. Put into sausage casing and smoke. After smoking, hang in a cool dry place, about 1 to 2 months to cure.

Thanks to the remote researcher who sent the query that caused us to stumble across this tale and “Sir Winter” (January 30 2014 post) in the Cotsen Collection, both of which seemed too good to keep to ourselves.

]]>https://blogs.princeton.edu/cotsen/2014/01/suggested-menu-item-for-a-monster-super-bowl-party/feed/0The Trials of “Sir Winter”https://blogs.princeton.edu/cotsen/2014/01/the-trials-of-sir-winter/
https://blogs.princeton.edu/cotsen/2014/01/the-trials-of-sir-winter/#commentsThu, 30 Jan 2014 22:58:14 +0000http://blogs.princeton.edu/cotsen/?p=980Continue reading →]]>If you’re like us, your office is freezing and your commute is worse, and you’re just about fed up with the “polar vortex”. With all this cold weather almost everyone is frankly, sick of winter. But did you ever stop to think about how poor Sir Winter himself feels? After all, he’s just doing his job (and doing it well this season) but he receives so much scorn.

So here’s a picture book story to warm your heart a little and perhaps remind you that Old Man Winter, for his part, has it bad too:

We’ll just have to wait and see what the groundhog says on Sunday about the arrival of the infant Spring (as if you won’t be watching the Super Bowl instead). Hopefully we’ll see him soon!

The “Toy The Child Likes Best” really was as popular as advertised but probably not this useful for wooing.

From the 1880’s till the end of the First World War the title of this post would have been heard (politely asked, screamed, cried, or begged for) anywhere in the western world during the holidays. Dr. Richter’s stone building sets were an immensely popular toy for children and hobby for adults. According to Jerry Slocum and Dieter Gebhardt, authors of The Anchor Puzzle Book, “Richter’sstone building sets became one of the most popular toys of its time and one of Germany’s largest export products. . . Anchor Stone Building Sets were the best-known toy and were exported all over the world” (p.15).

Being that the holidays are right around the corner we thought that it would be appropriate to exhibit our sets of these once well-known toys and explain a little about their history (not to mention get the chance to show off our sweet block buildings skills).

Our 3 boxes, side by side to show scale

The once famous Dr. Richter, while not really a doctor, was a savvy businessman. Before he purchased his Doctorate in Chemistry from the nonexistent University of Philadelphia in 1875, he was already a wealthy and successful member of the German bourgeois. Using his experience and capital gained as a druggist, Richter became a wholesome patent medicine manufacturer and distributor as well as a printer of textbooks (and self-promotional material). In 1877 he began building a state of the art factory outside of Rudolstadt, Thuringia (in central Germany) establishing a base of operations for all his business endeavors.

Ritcher used a variety of anchor devices as a trademark in order “to guard against the substitution of inferior imitations”.

The Anchor blocks come a few years later, in 1880, after Richter purchased the patent of the first ever “stone” building blocks from Gustav and Otto Lilienthal (who could not successfully market their invention like Richter could). Richter preserved the original Lilienthal formula consisting of a combination of quartz sand, chalk, linseed oil, and dye. Richter’s stones came in three colors: red, white, and blue and some sets even included metal parts for making bridges. The sets were sold in sizes ranging from the paltry Orion Set #0 with 17 stones, to the monstrous Great Fortress (Grosse Festung) with 9696 stones and weighing 375 lbs.

Our 3 sets are a sampling of the more commonly sized boxes. We have a small set No. 1 (dated between 1906-1910) of 23 stones and 2 metal bridge parts, but we are missing the 2 metal clasps for the bridges. We have a medium set No. 5 (dated between 1907-1910) of 94 stones with only 2 small white stones missing. Last we have a large set No. 12 (dated 1884) of 180 stones with no stones missing. The numbering system for sets is quite complex becoming somewhat clearer and more sophisticated over time (later sets even involve a system of passwords for identification that, for the sake of brevity, I will not detail here).

Below are our 3 sets displaying the box arrangement for the stones, as detailed on the diagram provided on the underside of the lid, and each box’s inlaid instructional booklets:

Solely for the sake of historical demonstration we mirthlessly assembled an example from one of the instructional booklets laid into each box:

2nd example on p.5 of Booklet No.1, perfectly executed.

2nd example on p.1 of the booklet for set No. 5 (we added an extra layer to the tower, borrowed from set No. 1, in order to impress you even more).

Example from p.32 of the booklet for set No. 8. (The other booklet laid in, specifically designed for set No. 12, is in preservation and couldn’t be used). The architecture had to be modified slightly in order to accommodate for the block differences between sets No. 8 and 12. The picture at the top of the page is from this set as well.

Given the popularity of these toys, and thus their lucrative dividends for Richter, you might be surprised by their short-lived appearance on the toy market. The downfall of Richter’s Anchor blocks, along with his Anchor Puzzles and other enterprises, was relatively swift. World War I saw the demand for toys (especially demand for German toys in the American market) plummet. War rationing meant that Richter could no longer procure the superior ingredients for his blocks, and the final Fortress sets (inspired, of course, by the war itself) were marred by inferior quality stone.

It might have been possible for the clever Richter to have weathered this misfortune and seen his company return to former glory. But he never got the chance. On a wholly sad and coincidental note, Richter died on December 25th, 1910, Christmas Day. At the time of his death Richter was one of the wealthiest men in Germany. Within 15 years his 4 sons squandered their inheritance and were unable to continue growing the company. With business downsizing since Richter’s death and the set backs caused by World War II, the Soviet takeover of East Germany (including a full takeover of the Rudolstadt factory), and increasingly outdated equipment, Anchor block manufacturing finally ceased in 1963.

But it doesn’t end there! Hobbyists and Collectors have been so enamored with Richter’s Anchor building blocks that the “Club of Anchor Friends” was founded in Amsterdam in 1979. With the support of the Club of Anchor Friends, the company was restored as Anker Steinbaukasten GmbH. Production at the factory in Rudolstadt restarted 15 September 1995.

So, if your still waiting to pick out that perfect gift for that block enthusiast you know . . . Look no further than Dr. Richter’s Anchor Building Box! Just remember, if it doesn’t have the trademarked anchor, it’s a cheap no-good lascivious knock-off!

]]>https://blogs.princeton.edu/cotsen/2013/12/all-i-want-for-christmas-is-an-anchor-building-box/feed/1Japanese Board Games at the Cotsen Children’s Libraryhttps://blogs.princeton.edu/cotsen/2013/12/japanese-board-games/
https://blogs.princeton.edu/cotsen/2013/12/japanese-board-games/#commentsMon, 16 Dec 2013 15:05:00 +0000http://blogs-preview.princeton.edu/cotsen/2013/12/16/japanese-board-games/Continue reading →]]>Cotsen Children’s Library houses approximately 300 Japanese boards games published from the nineteenth century through the 1950s, a rare collection comparable to the few existing in Japan. The Japanese board game, sugoroku (すごろく or 双六), can be traced back to the twelfth century. E-sugoroku (“e” meaning picture), a variety that features illustrated game boards, became popular among Japanese commoners in the late seventeenth century. Sugoroku did not originate as a children’s game. In fact, adults used to play the game, a simple dice-based contest, for gambling. Child-oriented sugoroku grew as commercial publishing for young people expanded during the twentieth century in Japan. It became a tradition on New Year’s Day for children to play sugoroku, which children’s magazines distributed as supplements to their January issues. Still, sugoroku remained a cross-age entertainment for the first half of the twentieth century. Government agencies and the military, educators, companies, and organizations have all appropriated the format for purposes beyond play, ranging from the dissemination of information and commercial advertising to literacy education, moral and political socialization, and militarist propaganda targeting children and adults alike.

The theme of this game board is children’s play. The twelve picture panels are arranged by month, each showing a leisure activity in which children would commonly be engaged during that time of the year. The panel for January (bottom right) befittingly depicts children sitting around a game board and playing sugoroku, making this piece a self-referential “sugoroku within sugoroku.” Can you spot where the dice is?

At the conference “Putting the Figure on the Map: Imagining Sameness and Difference for Children” hosted by the Cotsen Children’s Library in September 2013, we offered a workshop on sugoroku in collaboration with Setsuko Noguchi, the Japanese Studies Librarian at the East Asian Library, Princeton University. Under Noguchi’s guidance, conference participants gained a close look at a selection of game boards dating from the 1890s to 1950s. The time period saw Japan emerge as a modernized nation towards the end of the Meiji Period (1868-1912), flex her military muscle, escalate imperialistic expansion overseas, and transform politically after World War II. This blog post tries to highlight some of the gems shown in that workshop. A growing number of game boards have also been photographed. Their digital images are exhibited in “Japanese Prints and Drawings in the Cotsen Collection,” which forms part of the Princeton University Digital Library (PUDL).

Detail from Kodomo Asobi Sugoroku

Make your own dice

What is remarkable about this game board is timing. Printed on December 3, 1923 in Tokyo, which was nearly destroyed by the Great Kanto Earthquake on September 1, 1923, the game board testifies to the resilience of its publisher, Hakubunkan. The small print on the lower-left corner indicates that Hakubunkan had relocated to a temporary office. The upper right side of the sheet is a template that can be cut out and glued into a paper dice–a thoughtful offering for those players who had the misfortune of losing this essential device in the disaster.

Literary board games

One type of sugoroku is the adaptation of literary works, like this spinoff of Jonathan Swift’s “A Voyage to Lilliput.” Fantasy stories and works of fiction, with their narrative arc and frequent incorporation of journeys and adventures, render them suitable inspirations for designing the route of a new board game.

Boys’ games, girls’ games

Some games, like the first two shown above, portray both girls and boys in the pictures and clearly welcome players of both genders. Other games were intended for separate gender groups, reinforcing conventional gender roles. Pre-1950 games that are about voyagers and adventures typically feature male characters. Games designed for girls can be identified by their titles, issuing bodies (girls’ magazines), and the way female figures are portrayed as being engaged in domestic and indoor activities.

This game follows the life of a girl from birth to adulthood, starting from when she is a newborn being breastfed to when she becomes a shy bride at around age 20. The player who first reaches the final panel, that is, who first gets married, wins the game. The modifier “modern” in the title is perhaps based on the fact that, in some of the panels, the girl toddler has not exactly behaved like a Goody Two-shoes.

While you are here playing

…we can use your attention. Government agencies, commercial companies, and nonprofit organizations all joined in the making of sugoroku. Some of the creators of the sugoroku held at Cotsen include the post office, a life insurance company, and a fire prevention society, each translating their advertisement and publicity messages into an illustrated game board.

Distributed by the Society for the Promotion of Home Electrical Appliances, the panels in A Game of Home Electricity Education are a series of contrasting images, comparing life scenarios in a home with and without electrical appliances. The central figure is a young woman, newly married when the game begins. One panel shows a housewife sweeping the floor the old-fashioned way–with a broom–inviting her man’s scowl at the dust that flies into his meal. In the background, a woman gracefully operates a vacuum cleaner, free from worry of the dust. In another set of disturbing contrasts subtitled “A Dark House” and “A Bright House,” a woman who lives in a house poorly lit by a naked bulb receives her husband’s beating after she accidentally breaks a utensil; in another house a family is enjoying a happy time, their cheerful mood attributable to the bright and soft light emanating from a fancy desk lamp. By the end of the game, players will have learned that electrical appliances are good for personal health and wellbeing, family relations, and neighborhood safety. Indeed, as the image in the final panel suggests, owning electrical appliances is the key to the happiness of a woman and her family.

Detail from Denki Kyoiku Sugoroku

Around the world in one game

A popular theme found in the game boards is voyages around the world. Much like ukiyo-e art, sugoroku from the Meiji Period feature domestic travel scenes and landscapes of Japan as a common subject. The addition of international travel games was both a continuation of that tradition and a new fascination engendered by the success of the Meiji Restoration and technological advancement. These games reflect people’s interest in new transportation tools, Japan’s admiration of Western civilization, the nation’s aspiration to expand its colony and territory, and a growing awareness and (mis)understandings of a culturally and racially diverse global world.

Players need to rotate the game board 90 degrees clockwise to better discern a pictorial world map, which highlights animals, people, and famous scenery. The Rising Sun flags mark the Japanese explorations and marine/naval activities in many parts of the world.

Dark-skinned aboriginals were a frequent subject of sugoroku, ranging from a curious presence to be approached to a weak population to be conquered by the Japanese to cannibals to be feared and disparaged (as in this game).

From Home Education: Around the World Board Game

Game of wars

Every major war in which Japan was involved since the late Meiji Period has been reenacted in sugoroku: the First Sino-Japanese War (1894-1895), the Russo-Japanese War (1904-1905), World War I, Japan’s invasion of Manchuria (1931), the Second Sino-Japanese War (1937-1945), and the Pacific War (1941-1945). Often published with impressive promptness following the onset of the actual wars, these war games celebrate national pride in Japanese military power, glorify the valor of Japanese soldiers, tout the friendship between the Japanese military and foreign civilians under occupation, and mobilize the Japanese for wars with tailored messages for young boys, girls, and women. Various boys’ and girls’ magazines, women’s magazines, and the Patriotic Women’s Association of Japan were all distributors of sugoroku on war. Even the Japanese Army Armored Division published its own game titled Sensha Sugoroku (A game on tanks) in the 1940s, using black-and-white photos of tanks in operation to teach about military technology.

Its title echoing the official war propaganda term “Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere,” this is a wartime variation of the travel game. Players leave Japan and visit the vast land and sea of the Asia Pacific now under varying degrees of control by Imperial Japan. Four panels of pictures contain photo portraits of Subhas Chandra Bose (India), Ba Maw (Burma), Wang Jingwei (China), and José P. Laurel (the Philippines), who were the presidents and political leaders of Imperial Japan’s puppet states in East Asia when the game board was published.

Postwar transformations

The publishing of sugoroku dwindled after the end of World War II. The small number of post-1945 Japanese game boards held at Cotsen shows an ideological departure from older works. The games were de-militarized, and girls and boys could be seen taking a round-the-world trip together.

This sugoroku is densely packed with explanations of atomic science and the history of atomic research. The center prominently features Hideki Yukawa (1907-1981), who studied nuclear forces and won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1949. One panel of the game appeals for the peaceful use of nuclear power and makes the plea “No more Hiroshimas” in a somewhat unassuming manner on the busy page.

Detail from Genshi Sugoroku: Kagaku Kyōiku Manga

Sugoroku has been a versatile medium appreciated by many agencies for centuries, and, as a result, it has become a depository of popular culture, political agendas, and messages about social values, gender roles, race, and national identity. In-depth analysis of the themes, game rules, visual art, and authors of this collection of ephemeral prints would yield a rich understanding of the cultural history of Japan.

Digital resources

Acknowledgement

This post was made possible by Ms. Setsuko Noguchi’s generous sharing of her expert knowledge. Thank you!

(Edited by Mary Kathleen Schulman.)

]]>https://blogs.princeton.edu/cotsen/2013/12/japanese-board-games/feed/0Un Crime Effroyable: Juvenilia from the close of the 19th Centuryhttps://blogs.princeton.edu/cotsen/2013/11/one-of-our-newest-acquisitions/
https://blogs.princeton.edu/cotsen/2013/11/one-of-our-newest-acquisitions/#commentsWed, 20 Nov 2013 20:09:07 +0000http://blogs-preview.princeton.edu/cotsen/2013/11/20/one-of-our-newest-acquisitions/Continue reading →]]>One of our newest acquisitions here at Cotsen is a really unique item. It’s one of our favorite types of materials to have in the collection: juvenilia, an instance of literary, musical, or visual art created by a child artist. This particular piece is a cleverly illustrated French language poster presumably created and inscribed by J. M. Legeay (Jean-Marc?) in September of 1896 (see final panel). The poster tells a story in pictures about a reprehensible killing and the events that ensue after the despicable act, complete with a sobering moral.

Although this murder story is resolved and justice is meted out, there remain, for us, many mysteries surrounding the piece itself. Where was it made? Who made it? Why was it made? I will explore these questions about this intriguing historical object while we simultaneously explore the scandalous pictorial story it presents us with.

Without further ado: Un Crime Effroyable (a terrible crime)

This handmade poster is illustrated in crayon, ink, watercolor, and pencil. The piece features 10 pictorial paper panels and a foldable cardboard border. All the individual segments are backed on black linen cloth in order to join the work as a whole. The poster is designed to be easily hung on the wall, or neatly folded up along the panels’ divisions.

The top 2 panels serve as our decorative title:

(Notice the string for hanging and the torn hanging hole on the left.)

From these purely physical facts we might infer that this item was diligently worked on. It also demonstrates a good degree of artistic skill (for a young and presumably amateur artist) and craft ability that would have taken young Legeay many hours to illustrate, cut, arrange, and paste together. But we don’t get a clear indication of why he spent so much time creating it. What was this young man’s motivation? Legeay probably didn’t create a moral tale about wrongdoing and lawful retribution just for his own amusement. Rather, it seems reasonable to conclude that the impetus for this kind of project was probably a school assignment, an exercise in moral education. Let’s see what the young man learned…

In this first scene we are introduced to two characters: a middle class fop in his bright yellow pants, and a small green blob (who we soon learn is our murderer). The dandy seems quite dandy, and why not? It seems he, and at least the character behind him, has just left the wine and liquor store in the background.

Here, with seemingly no explanation and for no reason, our good-natured friend with the cherubic face is stabbed by a mustachioed assailant. But notice the juxtaposition of clothing style and appearance between victim and killer. Stylized against our top hatted and parasol wielding picture of happiness and innocence that is our middle class man, we have our murderer. He appears working class, with his plain green coat and matching kepi; no frills in his dress.

At this point we might venture to say that this depiction of a terrible crime is an illustration of class conflict; an instance of a working class man preying on a defenseless (and seemingly blameless) middle class man. I don’t think it would be unfair to assert that Legeay is probably middle class himself. Not only does he seemingly have access to schooling and a variety of coloring materials, he is also evincing a common middle class fear about the brutal and violent lower class wanting to harm the bourgeoisie. Of course, one has to keep in mind that Legeay is just a child; I don’t mean to foist upon him some propagandist motivation. I believe, rather, that he is just a young man reflecting the world views around him as he completes a school assignment.

In this next scene two officers happen upon the hapless body of our victim. Notice their spurs . . . but lack of horses to use them on.

The killer smokes his victim’s pipe, the scoundrel!

Our murderer contently relaxes in a local café after his grisly deed, as the be-spurred officer enters. From the clues in this panel we get our first guess at the possible region of origin for this poster. On the door we find inscribed “Café” and “Cidre”. Cidre is French for cider, specifically the kind popularly produced in the regions of Normandy and Brittany. This familiarity with cidre might be an indication that Legeay is from one of these regions (or just a budding young drunk). But as we will see, there is other evidence that points in a very different direction.

The murderer, sandwiched between spurs, is apprehended and clearly startled.

Here our guilty man seems repentant and regretful at the Assize Court. Notice the second sign in the background: Etres Sans Frapper (enter without knocking).

In this scene the action of the story comes to a close. Our killer is being escorted to a smiling executioner manning the infamous guillotine.The perpetrator’s escorts are none other than our officers-in-spurs and a crucifix bearing priest. This panel, however, shows us more than just the moments leading up to our murderer’s last.Look closely at the left side of the illustration and you might just be able to make out the most puzzling feature of this item, what appears to be debossed text reading: Hollonge.

Provided here are two closer images of the text (one vertical, one horizontal):

It is unclear whether this text is a hand written inscription or whether it is a trade mark on the paper itself. It seems unlikely that it is the debossed trade mark ofa paper manufacturer, “Hollonge”, because the mark does not appear on any other panel of the poster and no such company has turned up in my research. So it might be an inscription. But who would write it? Why was it written? What does it mean?

Hollonge might be a corruptionthat is supposed to denote Hollogne. Hollogne being short hand for the town of Grâce-Hollogne, known to English speakers as The Ardennes. Grâce-Hollogne, it turns out, is located not in France, but in Belgium. Butif the poster is from Belgium one might wonder why the text is written in French. Significantly, perhaps, The Ardennes is located in the province of Liège, placing it in the region known as Wallonia. This might place Legeay as a Walloon, a French speaking Belgian.

Another aspect of Hollonge is that it seems to have been etched by a tool. Hollange is composed of recessed markings, and some of the strokes appear too thick to have been written by pencil or pen. However it was made, it appears to have been a mistake. If the word is supposed to be Hollogne, it is spelled wrong. Furthermore the final character “e” also resembles an “l”.

Maybe Legeay wrote Hollonge. It’s possible, considering that, as we will see, Legeay makes spelling errors elsewhere as well. But why would Legeay write the place of origin on his own work? Certainly he knows (and doesn’t need to share) where he lives and where he’s made his work. Though the erroneous word is an inscription, it probably isn’t Legeay’s.

It’s more reasonable to assume that the inscription was written by a more recent owner of the work, perhaps a collector of juvenilia or an antiquarian bookseller. This owner was probably French, considering that Hollogne is written with two l’s as opposed to one (Hologne), which is the Wallonian spelling of the place-name. The word might have been erased because of the spelling error or because the attempt to place the origin of the work in Hollogne was unfounded.

With the limited evidence we currently have, all I can do is offer a few guesses about this work’s place of origin. Does the mention of “cidré” point towards Normandy or Brittany as the origin of the work, or does Hollonge point us to Belgium? We might just never really know, with any real certainty, where exactly this work was created.

But what we can be more certain of is that Legeay is probably middle class, that he is a decent illustrator, and that he is not a good speller. This brings us to the final panel:

The tricolour banner, using the three colors of the French flag, directs the possible origin of the work back towards France; or at least informs us that Legeay is a Francophile.

In the bottom right hand corner of the work we get our autograph: J M Legeay. Considering that the “m” is so diminutive, it might denote the second half of a hyphened name. A common name of this form, was (and still is) Jean-Marc. “Sep R/96″ I take, for obvious reasons, to represent the month of Septembre (September) and the year 1896.

This final panel delivers the true coup de grâce of the piece, a moral message from our insightful author that caps off the story: “N’assasinez point et vous n’serez point gigotiné” (Don’t murder and you won’t get the guillotine). Pointedly, young Legeay has spelled two words wrong; Assasinez is missing an “s” (assassinez) and the spelling of that last word, gigotiné (as opposed to the already Francophone guillotine), is very wrong. Legeay seems much more careless with his spelling and word choice than his illustrations. I don’t think the boy was very much motivated to really draw out his moral lesson but, in true boyish fashion, was much more interested in illustrating violence instead (probably to the chagrin of his teacher).

But let’s return to that very odd word gigotiné. It might mean more than just a child’s bad spelling. Using gigotiné might prove that Legeay is cleverer than he appears. Gigotiné, if spelled this way purposefully, has a double meaning. Not only does it obviously denote the guillotine, it also means to associate another word with that infernal machine: gigotin (a prepared leg of lamb). Coupled with this association, gigotiné reminds us of the outcome of the guillotine’s use. It’s tongue and cheek of course, and not meant to be taken too seriously. It was probably a common euphemism; not something Legeay came up with himself.

I can’t help but wonder if this piece was ever hung, and where it might have been displayed. Would Legeay’s parents have let that proud child hang this in their living room?

This poster is an article of juvenilia that, although humorous and interesting, is still shrouded in mystery. I’ve tried my best to explain who might have made this work and why they might have made it. But given my limited knowledge and the limited information that the work itself offers, my interpretation of this child’s work should be taken with a grain of salt. The origins of this clever little poster remain enigmatic. But what we do end up with is a glimpse into the life of a child during the close of the 19th Century. Though this poster begs more questions than it provides answers, it is nevertheless a charming look into how a child at the time saw and felt about the world around him (particularly, how he felt about murders and guillotines).

]]>https://blogs.princeton.edu/cotsen/2013/11/one-of-our-newest-acquisitions/feed/0A 15th Anniversary Spectacle of Skeletonshttps://blogs.princeton.edu/cotsen/2013/10/a-15th-anniversary-spectacle-of-skeletons-1/
https://blogs.princeton.edu/cotsen/2013/10/a-15th-anniversary-spectacle-of-skeletons-1/#commentsThu, 31 Oct 2013 14:49:11 +0000http://blogs-preview.princeton.edu/cotsen/2013/10/31/a-15th-anniversary-spectacle-of-skeletons-1/Continue reading →]]>Fifteen years ago today Cotsen opened its gallery doors to the public.Perhaps we should have drawn people into the space with a seasonal spooktacular, but the previous day’s ribbon-cutting took all the wind out of our sails.So here to celebrate the occasion are some ghoulish pictures to chill the funny bone and to jolt the brain from Cotsen’s Skelt and Webb Toy Theater Collection.

These pictures of skeletons and their friendly poisonous reptiles come from prints that were part of a juvenile theatre play based on Blue Beard or Female Curiosity!, (1798) a “grand dramatic romance” with script by George Colman the younger and score by Michael Kelly. Colman and Kelly’s dramatic take on Perrault’s celebrated but grisly fairy tale was inspired by French composer Gretry’s opera Raoul Barbe Bleue (1789), but they turned it into an over-the-top“Oriental” fanasy inspired by A Thousand and One Nights.But why skeletons and not djinns?

Think of Shakespeare set during the American Civil War or the Roaring Twenties.It’s the concept, not historical accuracy, that counts.If Colman and Kelly could reconceiveBluebeardas Abomelique, the Turkish tyrant or three-tailed bashaw who was preceded by a standard of horse tails (oh yes, there were live horses on stage), then it’s not such a leap of imagination to have the wife-killing villain stabbed to death by a skeleton and escorted down to hell by a platoon of his vengeful friends.No wonder the critics hated Colman and Kelly’s alternative to the holiday pantomime and the audiences loved it.

And if this comes knocking at your door tonight, throw away the healthy treats!

Thanks to Mr. Cotsen for making this blog, and everything else Team Cotsen does possible!

]]>https://blogs.princeton.edu/cotsen/2013/10/a-15th-anniversary-spectacle-of-skeletons-1/feed/0Books & Their Owners…https://blogs.princeton.edu/cotsen/2013/10/readers-their-books/
https://blogs.princeton.edu/cotsen/2013/10/readers-their-books/#commentsFri, 04 Oct 2013 20:29:51 +0000http://blogs-preview.princeton.edu/cotsen/2013/10/04/readers-their-books/Continue reading →]]>Kids are interesting — and sometimes funny — readers of books; but so are “grown-ups”… We all do things with our own books that make perfect sense to us, but somebody else looking at the same books later on might be hard-pressed, indeed, to figure out what we (i.e. the reader) had in mind.What do those notes mean? And how about those unrelated comments, scribblings, doodles, underlinings, or illegible marks? (Or the marks on the covers, or stains that look like evidence that the book was once used as a coaster? A sign of active use? Or of disdain for books?)

These are the kind of questions that rare book librarians and book historians routinely try to answer — well, at least some of the time! We look at books owned and used by someone else, often written in or marked up, and try to make sense of what a reader had in mind when using the book (usually in connection with the act of their reading, but sometimes clearly relating to other, decidedly non-textual, uses).

We then try to use this information — obtained in part by deciphering handwriting or marginalia, part by making educated deductions, and part by using the context provided by outside sources — to make sense of what the book readers / users might have had in mind and to reason out what this tells us about the history of reading or book use. Basically, trying to reconstruct past ideas, actions, and yes, intentions — or at least to recreate one plausible version of history that seems to make sense to us now — from the physical artifact and the evidence it contains.

A couple of books we’ve been working with in the last few days for Cotsen’s Newbery Catalog Project reminded me of these questions about physical evidence in books, yet again. (Readers of this blog may recall a certain fixation here with the whole subject of “marks in books…”)

Title page of “The New Pantheon” (5th ed.)

One of the engraved plates depicting “heathen” gods and goddesses

The first book is a copy of one of Newbery’s books for adults: The New Pantheon: or, Fabulous History of the Heathen Gods, Goddesses, Heroes, etc… (Salisbury: Newbery & Carnan [and others], 1777; fifth ed.). The book contains accounts of Greek, Roman, and Egyptian gods and mythology, with an appendix about the role of “augury,” “divination,” sacrifices, and ancient temples. The book is well-worn, so presumably (but not necessarily) it was well read, but there are no marks by readers anywhere in the text.

Close-up view of inscription

There are hand-written notes on both front and rear pastedowns, however; they have nothing to do with the text but provide potentially interesting evidence of use by book owners (or at least someone handling the books). On the front pastedown, someone was written in ink, “97 years old.” It’s not apparent what this means, but I think it’s probably a reference to the 1777 publication date, which would date this notation as 1874, seemingly in accord with the look of the ink and the writing style. Why somebody would write that — and in ink — is similarly not apparent, but it could have been done by a book owner admiring his/her book, or possibly even by a book dealer. (Personally, I think the placement of the writing and use of ink argues strongly against this latter use.)

Inscription on front pastedown (Note: the brown staining is from leather binding and the hinge tape from a prior owner’s repair)

Bookseller’s penciled notes on front endpaper (facing pastedown)

On the facing endpaper, we do see a more usual type of bookseller notation, in pencil: “Complete, 1777, £20.” This tells us that the book was offered for sale in England — which accords with the Cotsen Library’s provenance information on this book — as well as reminding us how much the prices of books has risen since then!

On the rear pastedown, we find more curious inked notation — and upside-down, to boot — suggesting a real disconnect between the handwriting and the book as a reading object. Perhaps the blank paper of the pastedown was just the handiest piece of writing matter someone had to hand?

Close-up view of inscription

Starting at the “top” of the inverted page, it reads:

Ribbons

—

2-0 ½

Socks

—

0-5

Lutestring

—

3-7

Hooks

—

0-6

6-6 ½

Inscription on rear pastedown (reversed for legibility in this image)

Clearly, somebody is recording expenses. But to what end? Perhaps just to jot them down quickly as a memory aid? (We’ve all jotted notes on paper napkins!) The individual items are all related to sewing and the making of clothing, a general type of expense that also suggests to me that this writer was a woman. This was information that an eighteenth-century woman managing her household accounts would track. (“Lutestring,” in case you don’t know — I didn’t! — is a glossy fabric used for women’s dresses at the time.)

Well-worn spine and upper cover of “The New Pantheon”…But was it well-read too?

Cotsen has other books with similar notations about prices or expenses, some of them also published by Newbery, including a 1795 publication of The Housekeeper’s Account-book, published specifically as a way of “keeping an exact account of every article made use of in a family throughout the year.” If I’m right, the writing about sewing supplies in The New Pantheontells us that this book was read, or at least handled, by a woman, and this further suggests that this title may have been generally read by women, as well as by men — not totally surprising, but an interesting piece of documentation of reading habits at the time.

The handwriting and type of ink could well be eighteenth-century, making them more or less contemporary with the book’s publication. (It’s a little hard to say for someone who’s not a handwriting specialist.) Comparison with existing price lists could enable more precise dating, as well as a comparison of prices at different times in the era.

Having read this far, you may wonder where’s the discussion (and/or photos) of the other book mentioned at the beginning. Well, having written this much about one book, I thought it best to wait until next week to write about that title, a children’s book: The History of Prince Lee Boo (London: Elizabeth Newbery, 1789). Cotsen’s copy of that book has quite a bit of writing in it, along with some pencil sketches of animals, a horse and a duck among them. Coming soon…

The world seemed to shrink during the nineteenth century, thanks to improved communications and transportation that facilitated travel, whether for commerce, conquest or leisure. Similarly the wonders of the world could be brought into the home via photography, maps, travel writing, and fiction. The representation of foreign lands inevitably required the illustration and description of their residents, which gave rise to a rich repository of colorful images of diversity.

Children’s books were important vehicles for the expression of senses of national identity that could confirm the superiority of one culture, marginalize others, instill a sense of international brotherhood or regional patriotism. Through a tangle of national types, stereotypes, and archetypes, children’s books shaped discourse as much as they reflected mainstream adult culture.

Cotsen Curator Andrea Immel welcomes attendees

Emer O’Sullivan delivers the keynote talk: “Picturing the World for Children: Early 19th-c. Images of Foreign Nations”

Exploring these themes, and others, this interdisciplinary Cotsen Library conference featured presentations that drew on the approaches of imagology, history, anthropology, psychology, and literary criticism, to discuss modes of expression arising that either targeted children, within or without the classroom, or appropriated discourses for them, to present competing, complimentary or contradictory images of foreign nations.

Presenting scholars represented institutions across the United States, Canada, and Europe, including: Princeton, University of Toronto, University of Innsbruck, University of Cologne, Leuphana University, Aarhus University, Roehampton University, Anglia Ruskin University, Ohio State University, and Wells College. (A full listing of speaker, abstracts, and biographical profiles, as well as the conference program schedule is available on the Conference website.)

Setsuko Noguchi discussing Japanese Suguroku picture games at workshop

The conference program also included two workshops focusing on materials from the Cotsen research collection — Japanese Picture Sugoroku games and English “dissected maps” and geography games — with a selection of collection objects available for viewing by attendees.

Two of the Cotsen collection items on display for attendees to see after the speakers’ presentations:

Detail showing Africa and the Mediterranean area from an English “dissected map” comprised of 40 pieces mounted on mahogany; it served as a jig-saw puzzle to both teach and entertain children learning about geography.“Africa in its Principal Divisions”(London: J. Spilsbury, 1767).

Japanese Soguroku Game Boardコドモアソビスゴロク(“A game on children’s play”)(Tokyo: Hakubunkan, 1917).Soguroku within sogoroku: the game board’s theme is “children’s play,” with 12 panels of pictures are arranged by month. Each panel shows a children’s leisure activity in that month; the panel for Jan. (bottom right) appropriately shows children playing sugoroku.

Some Presenters & Discussion at the Conference
(click on any thumbnail image to view larger version)

Gillian Lathey:“Children’s Encounters with Other Peoples at the 1851 Great Exhibition”

Opening conference reception, held in the Cotson Library’s Bookscape gallery

]]>https://blogs.princeton.edu/cotsen/2013/09/cotsen-conference-sept-11-13-2013/feed/0A Closer Look at Cotsen’s Collectionhttps://blogs.princeton.edu/cotsen/2013/09/a-closer-look-at-cotsens-collection/
https://blogs.princeton.edu/cotsen/2013/09/a-closer-look-at-cotsens-collection/#commentsTue, 03 Sep 2013 14:09:41 +0000http://blogs-preview.princeton.edu/cotsen/2013/09/03/a-closer-look-at-cotsens-collection/Continue reading →]]>The text below is adapted from Byrd Pinkerton’s WPRB blog posting and links to the audio interviews that Byrd conducted with Andrea Immel, Cotsen Curator, in June and July, 2013, with additional photographs taken by Byrd of the items discussed. (Byrd Pinkerton ’15 is a German major who works for WPRB, the Princeton student-run radio station.) A Closer Look at Cotsen’s Collection: Audio Interviews with Cotsen’s Curator by Byrd Pinkerton

It’s easy to experience the Cotsen Gallery, with its giant indoor tree and little cottage. But behind the gallery’s glass wall, there are thousands of books–some tiny, some massive, some gilt or marbled. That’s just a fraction of the collection, since more books (and dolls and lantern slides and board games and toy theaters…) are hiding out elsewhere in the vaults of Firestone.

And though they can’t be climbed on or played with in quite the same way as the Gallery furniture is, these treasures are accessible too. This summer, Princeton student and Cotsen staffer Byrd Pinkerton began a series of radio stories on different objects from the Cotsen Collection, which are now posted on Princeton’s WPRB Station blog.

In each piece, she talks to Cotsen Curator, Andrea Immel about an item, its history, what we do or don’t know about it, and why it might be interesting to researchers. The audio is complemented with text and photographs, but listeners can also page the items themselves and enjoy them in the reading room.

Taken literally, the phrase ‘don’t judge a book by its cover’ usually applies to your average book in a bookstore. It also applies, however, to rare books.

When I first decided to highlight pieces of Cotsen Library’s rare book collection for this series, I was eager to talk about some of the showier items the collection has to offer-Queen Elizabeth’s Latin grammar book, the Beatrix Potter original letters or elegant Spanish toy theaters from the 1930s.

Instead, Andrea and I decided to begin with The Paper People an unassuming text, printed and cloth-bound in the 1800s, and see what the information that can be gleaned from the contents, the cover, the catalogue of advertisements, and even the end-papers.

I’m not a fan of bingo. I would go so far as to say that I strongly dislike it. But even I was delighted to play with this 18th century pre-cursor to the game, the French Jeu de Cavagnole.

During our interview, Andrea and I walked through the complicated apparatus of the game, all kinds of ivory spindles, cages and beads with scrolls…

One of the biggest differences between this game and your average bingo experience is the game board. Jeu de Cavagnole decorations have nothing to do with the gameplay at all. They’re just conversation pieces, designed to move the experience beyond simple gambling.

Once we figure out that LMNO isn’t all one letter and S, C and K stop seeming quite so redundant and confusing, we generally don’t spent a lot of time learning the alphabet.

Still, whether we’re thinking about it or not, there’s a new line of alphabet teaching tools for every generation of kids: alphabet puzzles, alphabet blocks, songs and poems and books with associative word pictures.

This week, my conversation with Andrea was all about alphabets throughout the ages. While we’re probably not going to learn a whole about the alphabet itself from these games and books, it turns out that they can tell us a lot about us: the most common parts of our day-to-day, the moral values we want to pass down to our children, even our sense of humor.

This interdisciplinary program co-organized by Emer O’Sullivan and Cotsen Curator, Andrea Immel will draw on the approaches in imagology, history, anthropology, psychology, and literary criticism. It will focus on modes of expression arising within or without the classroom that either target children or appropriate discourses for them that create competing, complimentary, or contradictory images of foreign nations and their
peoples.

The program will also feature a workshop featuring primary resources from the Cotsen collection.

]]>https://blogs.princeton.edu/cotsen/2013/08/cotsen-conference-sept-11-13/feed/0The Cover Designs of Jemmy Catnachhttps://blogs.princeton.edu/cotsen/2013/04/the-cover-designs-of-jemmy-catnach/
https://blogs.princeton.edu/cotsen/2013/04/the-cover-designs-of-jemmy-catnach/#commentsWed, 17 Apr 2013 14:00:00 +0000http://blogs-preview.princeton.edu/cotsen/2013/04/17/the-cover-designs-of-jemmy-catnach/Continue reading →]]>The disreputable printer Jemmy Pitts was highlighted in the post for Twelfth Night 2013, but he was not the only no-good early nineteenth-century job printer in the seedy Seven Dials district near Covent Garden in London’s West End. Seven Dials marked the convergence of Little and Great White Lyon streets (now Mercer), Little and Great Earl (now Earlham), Little and Great St. Andrews (now Monmouth), and Queen (now Shorts Garden).

Seven Dials was also home to Jemmy Catnach (1791-1841), who was vilified for catering to the reading public’s insatiable appetite for rude ballads, accounts of violent crimes, sensational divorce cases, and the like. He was the subject of the chapter “Catnachery, Chapbooks & Children’s Books” in Percy Muir’s Victorian Illustrated Books (1971).Muir, who knew how to turn a phrase, damned Catnach for having printed his stuff with “mean and old typefaces” and adorning them with blocks “worn to a degree of indecipherability that hid their almost complete irrelevance to the text they were supposed to illustrate.”

In Cotsen there’s a stout volume consisting of thirty-odd pamphlets, many issued by Catnach, which make a liar out of Muir. Bound in are several titles in the so-called Catnach “series” of Large Books. Here is a typical list, from the rear cover for Little Tom Tucker, [ca. 1835?].

The advertisement doesn’t given any clues as to what the pamphlets looked like. If Muir is to be believed, it whould be taken for granted that a jobbing printer like Catnach will always produce a shabby product with tell-tale signs of recycling other printers’ cast-off type and blocks.

Given Catnach’s high marks for slipshod design, these delightfully exuberant covers on the nursery favorites in the Large Books come as a shock. And not a broken font in sight.

The style of the typefaces and wood-engravedblocks suggest the Large Books must have been issued relatively late in Catnach’s long career.

But once a rogue, always a rogue, even one vying for respectability. The rear cover of another Large Book in the Cotsen volume is illustrated with a block John Bewick made for the frontispiece of Richard Johnson’s False Alarms (London: E. Newbery, ca. 1787). And where did old Jemmy come by the block? Was it purchased from John Harris, Elizabeth Newbery’s successor, or his son, John junior?

]]>https://blogs.princeton.edu/cotsen/2013/04/the-cover-designs-of-jemmy-catnach/feed/0A tribute to winter by Maurice Boutet de Monvel for the first day of springhttps://blogs.princeton.edu/cotsen/2013/03/a-tribute-to-winter-by-maurice-boutet-de-monvel-for-the-first-day-of-spring/
https://blogs.princeton.edu/cotsen/2013/03/a-tribute-to-winter-by-maurice-boutet-de-monvel-for-the-first-day-of-spring/#commentsWed, 20 Mar 2013 16:02:29 +0000http://blogs-preview.princeton.edu/cotsen/2013/03/20/a-tribute-to-winter-by-maurice-boutet-de-monvel-for-the-first-day-of-spring/Continue reading →]]>I often get a glimpse of unfamiliar books in the collection when they circulate from the stacks to the reading room and back. One such book was Rondes des quatres saisons(1884), which celebrates the passing of the seasons in four pieces, with lyrics by the poet Leon Valade (1844-1884), music by Leopold Dauphin (1847-?), and illustrations by several artists, including Maurice Boutet de Monvel (1851-1913), best known for his patriotic picture book biography of Joan of Arc.

Rondes crossed my desk on Monday, when winter was doing its best to reassert itself as it does when the weather finally starts to warm up. While leafing through the volume, I found this chilling, but charming illustration of children stamping their feet to keep warm in a snow shower.

Rondes des quatres saisons came to the Cotsen Children’s Library with the acquisition of the Diana Rexford Tillson Collection in the mid-1990s. Its vast holdings of picture books, scores, sheet music, sound recordings, and toys documenting the history of music education and appreciation were thoughtfully selected by Miss Tillson, who was for years a Suzuki method violin teacher. Small discoveries like this Boutet de Monvel illustration are reminders of how rich Miss Tillson’s collection is. Thanks to her vision, it will continue to support in the years to come both the musicologist looking for a rare edition of Sir Thomas Morley and the performer looking for a piece of sheet music to rearrange for barber shop quartet.

]]>https://blogs.princeton.edu/cotsen/2013/03/a-tribute-to-winter-by-maurice-boutet-de-monvel-for-the-first-day-of-spring/feed/0Ride an Elephant and Happy Lunar New Year!https://blogs.princeton.edu/cotsen/2013/03/ride-an-elephant/
https://blogs.princeton.edu/cotsen/2013/03/ride-an-elephant/#commentsWed, 06 Mar 2013 20:48:34 +0000http://blogs-preview.princeton.edu/cotsen/2013/03/06/ride-an-elephant/Continue reading →]]>The Cotsen Library is home to an international poster collection that depicts children and reflects childhood from diverse historical periods, geographical areas, and cultural backgrounds. Through a pilot project in 2012, the Cotsen Library enhanced catalog records of a small set from its Chinese-language poster collection to allow researchers to search for posters by title, creator, or publisher information in both Chinese characters and pinyin phonetics. Subject headings were standardized to bring consistency to terms that describe the posters. A brief summary of the visual content is also provided.

The small set of about 50 posters dates from the early twentieth century through the mid-1980s. They cover a delightful variety of subject matter, including nianhua (年画, New Year prints) that decorated people’s homes, instructional wall charts for classroom use, and Communist propaganda posters that sent political messages to children and adults alike.

An untitled and undated New Year print gives us a glimpse of multiple facets of Chinese art, culture, history, and political dynamics. The only text in the picture is a red stamp of “Tianjin Yangliuqing Painting Shop” (天津楊柳青畫店), a press based in one of the most famous production centers of Chinese New Year prints. Traditional Yangliuqing art was known for the so-called “half printed, half painted” woodblock New Year prints: combining mass production and original folk art, pictures were first printed in monochrome outline, and each piece was then hand-colored by artisans. The Costen’s copy was printed and painted on a sheet of xuanzhi (宣纸, Chinese rice paper), measuring 30 x 20 inches.

Catalogers occasionally find themselves facing the little-envied job of coming up with titles for library materials that carry no such information. This New Year print posed such a task. How would you name an image portraying three children on the back of an elephant? The old catalog record suggested a title about celebrating the harvest. In order to justify that theme, one might have expected to see depictions of abundant grain overflowing from containers. However, could the basket of fruit in the young Chinese girl’s hand be an Eastern equivalent of cornucopia?

Boy on the back of an elephant. A common pattern for traditional Chinese folk art. (Image source)

It is unclear whether this New Year print was made around 1958-1959, when the Yangliuqing Painting Shop was established but not yet merged into the Tianjin People’s Fine Arts Publishing House, or around 1974-1980, when the shop name was restored.1 The picture is a fascinating manifestation of how tradition underwent adaptive transformations and survived a new political environment under the Chinese Communist regime.

Traditional Symbols and Communist Twists

Chinese New Year prints traditionally employ visual symbols and homophonic riddles to convey good wishes for the coming new year. Young children are among the favorite subject. Often portrayed with pink cheeks and chubby torsos, healthy-looking youth symbolize the success of family reproduction and a hopeful future. It is important to point out that images of children in Chinese New Year prints did not denote a child audience, but were intended for all viewers, particularly adults who wished to accomplish the foremost Confucian virtue and goal of raising a large family with sons and grandsons. Children were nonetheless an important part of the viewing experience. Superstitiously believing that children’s naïve voice carried some realizing power, an adult would engage a child in observing and talking about the pictures on the morning of the New Year’s Day, hoping that those lucky words from a child’s mouth would make happy things happen.

This New Year print from Cotsen is both a continuation of that “baby-loving” tradition and a departure from certain age-old characteristics. In a society that favored sons over daughters, boy figures dominated the subject of traditional New Year pictures. The presence of two young girls in this post-1949 picture, however, reflects an adherence to the idea of gender equality promoted by the Chinese Communist Party. All three children wear red scarves, indicating their membership in the Young Pioneers, which is a school children’s organization that answers to the Chinese Communist Party. (Former Chinese president Hu Jintao was the national leader of the organization in 1983-1984.)

Giant-sized peaches, shown in the basket on the right, are a traditional symbol of longevity in Chinese culture. The golden pineapple on the left also conveys wishes for good things, because the name of that fruit and the word for “prosperity” are homophones in southern Fujian dialect. Another homophone is played on the elephant. In the Chinese language, qixiang (骑象, riding an elephant) and jixiang (吉祥, auspicious) sound similar. The visual motif of elephant riding can actually be traced to the popular depiction of Samantabhadra, a bodhisattva often seen perched on an elephant in Chinese art and sculptures.

A final point of interest is the blossoming branch held high in the girl’s hand on the left. Traditionally, a more common object held by the elephant rider would have been an expensive-looking ruyi (如意). The term literally means “wish fulfillment,” and, according to popular belief, it has originated from the use of the handheld object as a self-sufficient backscratcher. Ruyi made from precious metals and stones used to be royal possessions. In Communist China, it would likely be a distasteful object associated with wealth, power, and privilege, and thus wisely avoided by the anonymous folk artist of this picture. The position of the girl’s arms, and the way she tilts her head closely resemble what we see in a ruyi-holding boy in traditional depictions. Is the pink flower branch an earthly substitute for rich men’s ruyi for political safety?

A ruyi decorated with pearls, made during the Qing dynasty (1644-1911). Collection of the National Palace Museum in Taiwan. (Image source)

You may find this picture in our library catalog by its new title: “Ji Xiang Ru Yi” (吉祥如意, An auspicious and wish-fulfilling year). Attesting to the flexibility and resilience of a folk art tradition, “Ji Xiang Ru Yi” has merged old and new, catered to both popular and political tastes, and wished for another new year of good luck to come.

]]>https://blogs.princeton.edu/cotsen/2013/03/ride-an-elephant/feed/1For the twelfth day of Christmas…https://blogs.princeton.edu/cotsen/2013/01/for-the-twelfth-day-of-christmas/
https://blogs.princeton.edu/cotsen/2013/01/for-the-twelfth-day-of-christmas/#commentsSun, 06 Jan 2013 06:20:00 +0000http://blogs-preview.princeton.edu/cotsen/2013/01/06/for-the-twelfth-day-of-christmas/Continue reading →]]>Among the traditional Christmas songs is “The Twelve Days of Christmas,” a memory-and-forfeits game played by the fire that describes the staggering array of gifts bestowed upon one person. The song has inspired many parodies, most of them too lame to stick in the mind, with the notable exception of Alan Sherman’s, with the diabolical substitution of a “naked lady with a clock where her stomach ought to be” for the fifth day’s bling. Then there’s P. D. Q. Bach’s “Twelve Days after Christmas” or Craig Courtney’s “Musicological Journey Through ‘The Twelve Days’ of Christmas…'”

Upper wrapper of Pitt’s “new edition” of the Twelve Days of Christmas (cover title)

Accumulative rhymes like “The Twelve Days of Christmas” were enjoyed in the days when people passed the time playing all kinds of complicated word and memory games. While the Cotsen Children’s Library does not have a copy of Mirth without Mischief (London: Charles Sheppard, ca. 1780), where the rhyme made its first appearance in print, it has a delightful one issued ca. 1810 by of all people the disreputable printer James Pitts in the notoriously seedy Seven Dials district of London.

In 2012, the Huffington Post asked PNC Wealth Management to cost out the true love’s haul and the numbers came to a hefty $107,000. But that’s actually way below cost, as Iona and Peter Opie , authors of The Oxford Dictionary of Nursery Rhymes, could have told the money men. If they had read the rhyme carefully (close reading is a skill everyone needs), they would have realized the mistake in basing the estimate on the last day’s worth of presents only. The true love had to shell out for not one, but twelve partridges (1 x 12 days), 22 not two doves (2 x 11 days), 30, not three French hens (3 x 10 days) and so forth for a whopping total of 364 items instead of a Grinchy 78.

On to the main point…

In The Twelve Days of Christmas, Sung in King Pipin’s Hall, the text begins as usual, illustrated with fine large cut of the partridge in the pear tree.

The first day of ChristmasMy true love gave to meA partridge in a pear tree..

But it does not conclude with the drummers drumming (the version of the text animated in the Jacquie Lawson e-card and circulated widely on web sites), but with the lords a-leaping, the earliest version cited by the Oxford Dictionary of Nursery Rhymes. Note that Jemmy Pitts’s cut of the twelve lords shows them pole vaulting down a hill, instead of executing grand jetés,which is how they are frequently portrayed.

Woodcut of the twelve pole-vaulting lords

Be that as it may, at least Pitts adorned one page of his Twelve Days of Christmas with a fine cut of a couple kissing under a ball of mistletoe suspended from the ceiling that Joseph Crawhall might have been proud of.

Under the mistletoe…

Our inquiring readers may be wondering what King Pippin has to do with “The Twelve Days of Christmas.” This could be an allusion to the hero of The History of Little King Pippin (London: F. Newbery, 1775), who was king of the good boys and presumably had premises suitable for large-scale holiday entertaining!

Merrill Publishing Company in Chicago is considered to have published some of the best of its kind.The proprietor Marion Elizabeth Merrill demanded–and got–quality artwork for printing on thin cardboard stock of books that would sell for just 29¢.Jean Woodcock bought Merrill in 1979 and in 2008 a selection from Merrill’s archive of original artwork for cover designs was offered for sale by Mitch Itkowitz.

Among Merrill’s popular illustrators was Elizabeth Anne Voss (1925-1969).Her pretty little Caucasian girls with almond-shaped eyes wearing dresses bedizened with bows, ribbons, and trims are instantly recognizable.Their continuing appealis confirmed by the fact that high-quality pdfs of her paintings can be purchased for printing out and recreating the originals at home in a slightly smaller format.Voss’s fans have speculated that there were two sisters working for Merrill at the same time because covers in the same style are signed “E. Voss,” “E. A. Voss,” “B. Gartrell,” “Betty Gartrell,” and “Elizabeth Gartrell.”

Thanks to a recent gift of a small group of covers and artwork by Voss from the late 1950s and early 1960s from her husband Donald H. Voss ’44, *49, I’ve pieced together some information about Betty Anne, as she was known.She was the daughter of Nancy Reynolds and the engineer Robert D. Gartrell, who is famous in horticultural circles for the Robin Hill Azaleas, a group of hybrids he developed while living in New Jersey.One cultivar was named after his artist-daughter.Before her marriage to Donald Voss in 1952, Betty Anne signed her work with her maiden name Gartrell.

A cover signed with Betty Anne’s married name.

Covers in the Voss donation suggest that cover designs signed “Gartrell” or “Voss” could be in simultaneous circulation for some years, so it’s no wonderpeople have assumed that E. A. Voss and B. Gartrell were two people.This confusion might have been cleared up much sooner if Voss had illustrated picture books instead of covers, in which case it’s more likely that she would have been the subject of articles in standard reference sources.

Some of Voss’s best loved images appeared on the covers of books with holiday themes, although typically she did mostly outline drawings for the coloring books.

Voss’s title page designs for two editions of Little Miss Christmas and Santa.

The copies of Little Miss Christmas and Santa and Little Miss Christmas and Holly-Belle in the Voss donation suggest that Merrill must have asked her to redo the cover paintings periodically to keep them fresh.Voss designed new gowns and accessories,added and subtracted figures, which necessitatedrearranging the composition, etc.The typefaces and their layout could vary significantly from cover to cover, although at first glance they look rather similar.

Two variant covers by Voss for Little Miss Christmas and Santa.

The hair styles of Little Miss Christmas and Holly-Belle seem to be the only constants in these two cover designs.

One of the nicest items in the Voss gift is the copy of Little Miss Christmas and Holly-Belle with Santa Claus in the background.It’s not a coloring book, as I discovered while processing the collection, but Betty Anne’s preliminary drawings for the costumes for the two characters fastened into printed covers.

Can you spot the differences between the drawings (left) and the published artwork (right)?

Cotsen is most grateful to Donald Voss for this tribute to his wife, whose work is so characteristic of the period.

It’s no coincidence that Paint Like Peter Rabbit ready for distribution in early November when the Morgan Library and Museum in New York opened the exhibition Beatrix Potter: The Picture Letters (2 November 2012-27 January 2013), which was favorably reviewed by Edward Rothstein in the Friday November 1 New York Times. The Cotsen Children’s Library loaned thirty-two items from its important collection of Beatrix Potter’s books, manuscripts, drawings, and objects to the Morgan, so there’s a marvelous opportunity over the holiday season to see treasures that haven’t yet been exhibited at Princeton.

]]>https://blogs.princeton.edu/cotsen/2012/11/new-cotsen-publication-paint-like-peter-rabbit/feed/0Cotsen Research Projects: Lothar Meggendorfer’s Mechanical Bookshttps://blogs.princeton.edu/cotsen/2012/10/beginning-in-the-1970s/
https://blogs.princeton.edu/cotsen/2012/10/beginning-in-the-1970s/#commentsMon, 01 Oct 2012 14:00:00 +0000http://blogs-preview.princeton.edu/cotsen/2012/10/01/beginning-in-the-1970s/Continue reading →]]>The text below was kindly provided by Amanda M. Brian, recipient of a 2012 Princeton Library Research Grant, following her August 2012 research project with Cotsen Children’s Library special collection materials: “The Wider & Whiter World in German Mechanical Books.” Dr. Brian is currently assistant professor of history at Coastal Carolina University in Conway, SC.

Lothar Meggendorfer’s Mechanical Books

by Amanda M. Brian

Beginning in the 1970s, pop-up books enjoyed a kind of renaissance in the United States. Within this trend, the name of Lothar Meggendorfer (1847-1925) was continually floated as an early master of movable illustrations in children’s books. Meggendorfer began his career as an illustrator for the Munich-based humor magazines Fliegende Blätter and then Münchener Bilderbogen. Like several of his colleagues at these publications, Meggendorfer became a crossover success in the world of late-nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century children’s literature. His books became bestsellers during his lifetime; the most popular went into multiple editions and were translated into many languages.

It seems he was aware of both his influence and its monetary reward, for he included a telling self-portrait in which he stood at an easel and received a commission in Gute Bekannte. This discovery was one of several unexpected and deeply satisfying moments that I experienced as a researcher in the Rare Book Division at the Princeton University Library.

Moreover, Meggendorfer’s books were frequently reproduced and widely distributed along a German-British publishing network, which then collapsed in the face of World War I. After the war, Meggendorfer continued his work in puppet theater, a passion that had clearly influenced his figures’ exaggerated physiognomy, especially their large noses and wide mouths.

Then in 1975, the New York book dealer Justin G. Schiller purchased and prepared a catalog of a cache of production files found in J. F. Schreiber’s Esslingen warehouse for what was believed at the time to be the entire surviving Meggendorfer archive. Maurice Sendak provided an aptly named “Appreciation” in Schiller’s The Publishing Archive of Lothar Meggendorfer, adding to a certain frenzy for Meggendorfer’s books, particularly his movable books. Following this advertising, between 1979 and 1982, five of Meggendorfer’s most popular movable books were reissued and reproduced, culminating in 1985 in a kind of anthology of his most intricate and humorous pull-tab illustrations, The Genius of Lothar Meggendorfer. This relatively recent attention has cemented Meggendorfer’s reputation as a paper-engineering master on both sides of the North Atlantic. It is, therefore, not too surprising to find such an extensive collection of Meggendorfer’s children’s books in the United States; the Cotsen Children’s Library has perhaps the best examples of his works States-side, which is particularly impressive considering the wear and tear movable illustrations from over a century ago have taken.

Cotsen Children’s Library also houses an almost equal number of Meggendorfer’s non-movable books to his movable books. This acts as a kind of corrective to the amount of attention afforded his pull-tabs and panoramas at the expense of his overall production of texts and images. His self-portrait, after all, was in the non-movable Gute Bekannte. A collection that just focused on Meggendorfer’s elaborate pull-tabs–which, do not misunderstand me, are impressive with their simultaneous movements achieved by paper levers attached to small copper rivets hidden between the pages–would overlook the non-moveable (in the scholarly definition of movable parts) but equally interactive Nimm mich mit!

This small, 8 centimeters by 24 centimeters, picture book was designed for the non-reading, or read-to, child to “take along” around the home and into the field to compare the drawn object to the real object. It presented a comprehensive catalog of things in the child’s “garden and room” to be examined “with love,” as the introduction explained. For example, pages 125 to 184, the largest section of the book, portrayed animals with skill at expressive caricatures. Many of these animals could have been found in the child’s backyard (e.g., chicken and grasshooper), nearby woods (e.g., deer and hedgehog), or traveling menagerie (e.g., elephant and parrot), but some of these animals (e.g., whale and ostrich), the child would not have seen in nature.

In Meggendorfer’s oeuvre, animals were the most pervasive theme, followed by music. Focusing on the content and not just the mechanics of his works, it is clear that Meggendorfer’s audience was expected to identify and enjoy both domestic and foreign animals. But there were clear differences between how he portrayed domestics–meaning both native to Europe and pervasive in his audience’s lives, like dogs, horses, and sparrows–and exotics–meaning non-native to Europe and perceived as wild by his audience, like elephants, lions, and apes. How domestic and exotic animals behaved differently became instructive in Meggendorfer’s books, representing hierarchies among and between Europeans and non-Europeans, and teaching his middle-class youthful audience about their place in the world.

To offer but a single example, compare the poem with the movable illustration “Good Friends” [above] in the British production All Alive, which featured rabbits, a goat, and a cat as a “happy family,” to the poem with movable illustration “Die Heimkehr” [below] in the original German version Reiseabenteuer des Malers Daumenlang und seines Dieners Damian.

In “Good Friends,” the ideal middle-class home was portrayed by domestic animals “living in such harmony.” Domestic animals continued to model appropriate behavior for bourgeois children in Meggendorfer’s works. By contrast, in “Die Heimkehr,” the young lord, Daumenlang, and his servant, Damian, have traveled the world, including Africa, and have headed for home loaded down with booty, including the skins of the tiger and black bear that they had encountered and mastered, and live apes and birds. They found danger, but not harmony, among exotic animals, which were perceived as part of the conquerable landscape of certain non-European territories. I first saw the illustration of the tiger “attack” from Reiseabenteuer in the Cotsen Library; those pages have been excised in the late-twentieth-century reproduction of the book.

The books by Lothar Meggendorfer that delighted audiences in the late nineteenth century and were embraced with enthusiasm in the late twentieth century were not simply examples of paper acrobatics. Rather, they both reflected and shaped the historical context of the expanding German empire at the turn of the twentieth century.

]]>https://blogs.princeton.edu/cotsen/2012/10/beginning-in-the-1970s/feed/0The Many Faces of Little Red Guardshttps://blogs.princeton.edu/cotsen/2012/09/little-red-guards/
https://blogs.princeton.edu/cotsen/2012/09/little-red-guards/#commentsThu, 20 Sep 2012 04:00:00 +0000http://blogs-preview.princeton.edu/cotsen/2012/09/20/little-red-guards/Continue reading →]]>One strength of the Cotsen Library is Chinese-language children’s magazines published during the twentieth century. Prominent titles include early volumes of Er Tong Shi Jie (儿童世界, Children’s World) and Xiao Peng You (小朋友, Little Friend), both launched in Shanghai in 1922. Little Friend is arguably the longest-running children’s magazine in China, having remained active to this day despite two major suspensions–first during the Sino-Japanese War (1937-45) and later during the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution (1966-76).

Another important group of magazines is Hong Xiao Bing (红小兵, Little Red Guard), which sheds light on Chinese children’s reading, learning, and socialization during a specific period of political chaos, as well as lends a nuanced view of Chinese history and culture that concern the youngest members of the society. These were reorganized through a recent cataloging project at Cotsen.

From “Young Pioneers” to “Little Red Guards”

The “Little Red Guards” was the name of a selective children’s organization sanctioned by the Chinese Communist Party from December 1967 through October 1978. Prior to that, most school students from six to fourteen years old were members of the Young Pioneers, who wore trademark triangular, bright-red scarves around their neck. During the Cultural Revolution, children who allegedly failed to meet certain political criteria were denied membership, and eligible ones savored the great honor of being part of a new organization called the “Little Red Guards.” This organization should not be confused with the “Red Guards” (红卫兵), which consisted of older teens and college-age youth and played a far more aggressive role during the Cultural Revolution.

The Many Faces of Little Red Guards Magazines

Hong Xiao Bing Bao (红小兵报, Little Red Guard’s Paper) was first launched in Shanghai on July 20, 1967 as a children’s weekly. After the term “Little Red Guards” replaced “Young Pioneers” as a formal name by the end of 1967, a squadron of children’s magazines sprouted from all over China, all named after the revolutionary buzzword “little red guard.” When the Young Pioneers was restored in 1978, these “little red guard” magazines either ceased publication or adopted various new names.

Map of Little Red Guard magazines

Cotsen holds issues of Little Red Guard (hereafter LRG) magazines from eighteen provinces, in addition to one newspaper, pamphlets, and books with the popular term LRG in their titles, all dated from the late 1960s through the 1970s.

Each blue placemark represents one Chinese publisher that distributed a children’s magazine called LRG, or with a similar title, during the Cultural Revolution (1966-76). The identical title shared by different publishers has caused confusion among researchers today, who have sometimes referred to it as a single children’s magazine.

Of the nineteen titles of LRG magazines held at Cotsen, the earliest two were released 1968-69 in Shanghai, including one issue of Shanghai LRG (上海红小兵, Jan. 1968) and more than 30 issues of LRG (Jun. 1, 1968-Dec. 25, 1969), but their relationship with each other is unclear. At least half of China’s provinces and municipalities–from Shanghai in the east to Gansu in the west, from Heilongjiang in the north to Guangdong in the south–produced their own LRG magazines, which varied in size, frequency, and content.

A Publishing Miracle and Wealth of Information

The Cultural Revolution is widely known as a period of suffocating ideological control over print and media. Juvenile reading materials were no exception. Children growing up during the Cultural Revolution had few reading choices, when old popular titles were banned, and writers, illustrators, and editors were imprisoned or banished to labor camps in rural areas. Under the aegis of a politically correct title, these vibrant LRG magazines, issued as frequently as twice a month in some provinces, were short of a publishing miracle.

Written at the reading level of primary school students, LRG magazines typically include rhymes, songs, news and current affairs, short stories with illustrations, comic strips, and drawings by children. Many carry fine, off-set printed pictures of hand-colored woodblock prints, watercolor paintings, and oil paintings. Anecdotes suggest that some schools would subscribe to LRG and make it available in classrooms for supplementary reading. The magazine has been mentioned in people’s fond memories of their childhood reading.

By virtue of their quick publication cycles, LRG magazines capture the vicissitudes of political turmoil and provide a wealth of information about Chinese history, literacy education, propaganda and censorship, gender role, and political socialization of youth during the 1970s.

China’s daughters…and the evil queen

In 1961, MAO Zedong saw a photo of a rifle-carrying female militia member and was inspired to write a poem, “Militia Women,” in which he commended “China’s daughters” for “having high-aspiring minds / They love their battle uniforms, not feminine dresses.” Visual depictions of revolutionary, progressive females during the Cultural Revolution strived to meet Chairman Mao’s aesthetic standards for women and girls, wiping out as much difference between male and female body features as possible. A typical image of masculine-looking, strong Chinese women can be seen on the cover of a 1965 Little Friend issue.

After the death of MAO Zedong on September 9, 1976, his fourth and last wife, JIANG Qing, was made to shoulder much of the blame for the damage and devastation caused by the Cultural Revolution. LRG issues published after her downfall ridiculed Jiang in stories and cartoons. In one illustration (shown above) that accompanies spoken rhyming lyrics, the then sixty-three-year-old former First Lady is satirically portrayed with a slim waistline and a long dress, making her the most “fashion-conscious” female in all LRG publications.

Sugar-coating learning with political messages

Pinyin exercise in LRG (1975, no. 5). Shanghai, Mar. 10, 1975. A rhyme that celebrates China’s new 1975 Constitution. The last two lines mean “Chairman Mao made the new Constitution / The red regime is as stalwart as steel.”

The Cultural Revolution has been remembered as a period when intellectuals were censured, schooling was disrupted, and students were encouraged to challenge teachers and even physically assault them. LRG magazines, however, carry a surprising amount of writing that encourages literacy and learning, using revolutionary rhetoric and quotations from MAO Zedong to legitimize the call. Pinyin exercises, which drill the crucial Chinese literacy skill of pronouncing phonetics, spell out political slogans. A math problem is couched in the practical scenario of children dividing up liquid pesticides while working on a farm, as Mao had instructed students to learn through manual labor. A science essay explaining the physics of audio amplifiers begins with the importance of listening to news and political messages through radio broadcasts first thing in the morning.

A Mirror of Chaos

It must have been especially confusing for a child to grow up during the Cultural Revolution. Traditional values were turned upside down. Countless old authority and power figures were demoted to “untouchables” in the new political caste system. “Red Guard” factions attacked one another, each claiming to be Mao’s truest followers. LRG magazines reflect that chaos, sometimes with immediate responsiveness to contemporary events, and other times with a curious length of delay. As one of the few accessible and appealing children’s reading materials of the time, their content could further add to the sources of confusion for young readers.

On one hand, LRG magazines are full of folkloric stories befitting young readers’ level of cognitive and moral sophistication. Stories about Communist heroes and class struggles painted a binary world of black and white, good and evil. On the other hand, exactly who the “good guy” and the “bad guy” was could change drastically as a result of power struggles. Two of the political leaders that received about-face treatment in LRG were Marshal LIN Biao and China’s future No. 1 leader DENG Xiaoping, as shown by the following illustrations.

Cover image of LRG (1971, no. 18). Shanghai.

This LRG issue was published September 25, 1971, nearly two weeks after the death of Marshall Lin (in green military uniform on the right, standing close to Chairman Mao). According to the dominant account–among competing versions of the event–Lin had allegedly attempted to assassinate Mao but failed, before being killed in a plane crash on September 13, 1971. For some complicated reasons, the cover image did not reveal the colossal political crisis, but continued to portray the late Lin as Mao’s “closest comrade-in-arms,” as was officially stated in the Constitution of the Chinese Communist Party. Could the magazine editors be as ill-informed as the general public of Lin’s secret coup? Or were they “insiders” conniving to cover up the Party’s biggest embarrassment?

In LRG (1973, no. 11). Jilin, Nov. 1, 1973.

In this photo and rhyme published two years later, school children were condemning Lin as a “wolf in sheep’s clothing ” and head of the “anti-Party clique.”

A panel of comic strips in LRG (1976, no. 8). Guangdong, Aug. 1976.

Children perform and watch a play, the theme of which is to condemn the “stinky” DENG Xiaoping.

A news photo in LRG (1977, no. 9). Fujian, Aug. 1977.

Published one year later, this LRG issue shows Chinese Vice President DENG Xiaoping giving the closing speech at the eleventh National Congress of the Communist Party of China in 1977.

LRG magazines offer rich raw materials to help us imagine the intellectual life of a generation of Chinese children–now having approached middle age–growing up in a world of conflict and confusion. Cotsen holdings of these magazines can be most easily located by searching for titles in Chinese characters (“红小兵”) or pinyin Romanization (“hong xiao bing”).

]]>https://blogs.princeton.edu/cotsen/2012/09/little-red-guards/feed/0Cotsen Research Projects: Vienna Secessionist Book Illustration for Childrenhttps://blogs.princeton.edu/cotsen/2012/08/vienna-secessionist-book-illustration-for-children/
https://blogs.princeton.edu/cotsen/2012/08/vienna-secessionist-book-illustration-for-children/#commentsThu, 16 Aug 2012 12:00:00 +0000http://blogs-preview.princeton.edu/cotsen/2012/08/16/vienna-secessionist-book-illustration-for-children/Continue reading →]]>Note: The Friends of the Princeton University Library offer short-term Library Research Grants to promote scholarly use of the research collections, which are awarded via a competitive application process. Researchers usually offer a short informal talk or presentation to library staff and others in the Princeton academic community near the end of their work on campus about the results of their research and how it fits into their broader research project or interests.

The text below was kindly provided by Megan Brandow-Faller, recipient of a 2012 Library Research Grant, following her July 2012 research project at Princeton in both the Cotsen Children’s Library and Marquand Art Library, following her July, 13, 2012 talk entitled: “An Artist in Every Child–A Child in Every Artist: Avant-Garde Frauenkunst and Kinderkunst in Vienna, 1897-1930.” (The images accompanying the text are adapted from select slides in her PowerPoint presentation.) Dr. Brandow-Faller is currently Assistant Professor of History at the City University of New York/Kingsborough. Her research focuses on women’s art institutions in early twentieth century Habsburg Central Europe.

Vienna Secessionist Book Illustration for Children

by Megan Brandow-Faller

The art of the child found fertile ground in Vienna 1900, cultivated by Franz Čižek’s renowned Jugendkunstkursen (Youth Art Classes), at important exhibitions of children’s art, and in the pages of Ver Sacrum and other periodicals. Rejecting the elaborate technological miniatures popular in the nineteenth century–toys intended to ‘dazzle’ but which would ultimately leave a child cold–artists associated with the Vienna Secession and Wiener Werkstätte (the applied arts commercial workshops co-founded by Josef Hoffmann and Koloman Moser in 1903) designed objects conceived ‘with the eyes of a child.’ Secessionist toys, illustrated books and graphics using simple shapes and bright colors were designed to awaken children’s creative impulses in a design language that children could understand.

Yet, it was actually the female students of Hoffmann, Moser, and Czeschka who produced some of the most important work in artistic toys and children’s book illustration. Contemporary critics found toy design and book illustration particularly appropriate fields for female craftswomen, given women’s ‘natural’ stake in childrearing (i.e. that women were believed to better understood children’s thought processes than men). Female craftswomen training at Austria’s progressive School of Applied Arts and Vienna’s Women’s Academy exploited such discursive linkages to the fullest.

One popular method of graphic art and book illustration for children involved the use of painted stencils to produce clear, simple images. Stenciling had experienced a recent revival during the English and Scottish arts-and-crafts movement. In conjunction with the so-called Schablonieren Kurs (Stenciling Course) taught by Secessionist Adolf Böhm at the Women’s Academy, Böhm’s students published illustrated fairy tale and picture books and gained recognition through replication of such illustrations in the pages of Ver Sacrum, die Fläche and other periodicals. A special September 1902 issue of the Secessionist periodical Ver Sacrum featured the work of Böhm’s students. (Figures 1a & 1b) His students’ toy designs were regularly featured in the pages of The Studio.

One such book of children’s stencils (housed in the Cotsen Collection) created by Women’s Academy classmates artist/designers Minka Podhajska and Fanny Harlfinger-Zakucka around 1903 employs a fresh and original graphic language using negative white space in lieu of the black borders that Čižek encouraged his students to bound their drawings.

Packing a strong expressive punch into a minimal number of marks expressed as abstract geometrical shapes, Harlfinger-Zakucka’s stenciled image of a reform-clothing-clad mother, sporting what looks to be Wiener-Werkstätte style textiles, guiding her toddler plays on negative and positive space to reveal the interconnected forms and hence psychological closeness of mother and child (Figure 2b). Her stencil of a children’s Jause (snacktime) employs similar techniques (Figure 2a). These stenciled images reveal a striking encounter with Japanese printmaking techniques in their unusual manipulation of spatial perspective and boldly ‘cropped’ nature.

Likewise carving her images out of negative white space, Podhajska’s depiction of a dancing couple (Figure 3a) reveals her fascination with folk art, an important source of influence for the turned-wooden toys she and Harlfinger-Zakucka produced. Her stencil of a witch conjuring her brew employs a wonderfully expressive sinuous curve associated with the new art movement (Figure 3b), which also relates well to the idiosyncratic use of turning-lathe methods in her turned-wooden figurines. The tangible figure of the witch and cauldron is expressed in a curvilinear fashion. Yet it is the intangible aspects of the image–the suggestion of smoke, fire and more abstractly the witches’ incantations–lending it its fiery expressiveness. While both artists tapped into folk imagery and design idioms, their work freely reinvented and modernized traditional folk design into images that were designed to awaken children’s creativity through subtle narrative elements. Images stood alone to leave the rest of the story to children’s imagination.

For centuries the story of the flood in Genesis 6-9 has been an inspiration to toymakers. Thanks to the biblical connection, miniature arks are the best known of the so-called Sunday toys or quiet amusements appropriate for the Sabbath.

Noah’s ark from l’arche de Noé (Paris:1880)

Examples as early as the seventeenth century survive and famous German toymaker Georg Hieronymous Bestelmeier advertised elaborate, expensive sets in his enormous 1803 catalogue. During the nineteenth century the entry into the ark came into its own as a subject for high-end toys, novelty book formats, and nursery friezes.

The recently-opened Cotsen Gallery exhibition features two of Cotsen’s most spectacular arks–one a building toy, the other a panorama:

Full set of l’arche de Noé: the ark, stand-up figures and scenery, and illustrated box, with Hutton’s artwork as background.

This toy with its combination of pictorial blocks and stand-up figures, including animals, people, and background scenery, is something of a departure from the traditional ark with a removable roof or top deck that allows it to double as storage for the accompanying sets of paired animals.

Descriptive sign (shown next to the Ark in previous photo), dating the Flood very precisely in 1536 BC.

The design was not unique to Le déluge universel: there is a similar set representing the fall of Canton in 1858 during the second Opium War at the Getty Research Institute.

Lithographed box lid, with stand-up figures repeating some poses.

Like many elaborate late nineteenth-century French toys, a very showy illustration lithographed by the H. Jannin firm decorates the box lid.

Stand-up animals and background pieces.

This previously “hidden collections” item was “rediscovered” in 2011 when Cotsen’s toy collection was shifted into a new vault.

Meggendorfer’s dummy of the panorama, cardboard leaves hinged with fabric, measuring almost five feet long folded out fully(Note: photo shown here composed of two separate photos, added together, creating the false effect if irregularity in the middle, not present in actual item).

The German artist Lothar Meggendorfer is best known for his humorous mechanical book illustrations, but he also designed table games with playing boards and cards, as well as “theaters” in the round showing scenes in the city park, the zoo, or the circus, constructed of cardboard leaves hinged together with fabric.

Animals being herded onto the Ark, two-by-two, with one tiger looking quizzical and one horse perhaps having second thoughts?

Meggendorfer’s mock-up of this panorama depicting the animals’ stately progress into the ark shows his flair for large-scale scenic effects. It came from the publisher’s archive of Meggendorfer’s artwork, which was dispersed some years ago.

While most animals are depicted placidly, as per the usual description, Mrs. Lion looks none too pleased, a nicely humorous touch.

Gift of Justin G. Schiller in honor of the opening of the Cotsen Children’s Library in 1977

(Note: The text here is based on the exhibition labels by Andrea Immel, Cotsen Curator.)

I received an inquiry from a woman who was hoping to obtain copies of a few missing illustrations in Hans Bruckl’s Mein Buch, which she’d had as a girl in Belgium during World War II. She didn’t know why they had been removed, but suspected that the portrait of Hitler she remembered had something to do with it. “I think,” she wrote, “my parents wanted me to know some German in case, but took out certain illustrations–also in case–depending on who was going to win the war.”

Cotsen has nine different editions of Mein Buch, published by the Munich firm R. Oldenbourg between 1923 and 1964, five of which were printed during the National Socialist period. The records in the Princeton University online catalogue indicated that Mein Buch had been reillustrated several times, but I couldn’t find any information about the nature of the changes in either Gisela Teistler’s Fibel-Findbuch: Deutschsprachige Fibeln von den Anfängen bis 1944 (2003) or Noriko Shindo’s Das Ernst Kutzer-Buch: Bio-Bibliographie (2003). So I headed down to the stacks on a hunch that some of changes to the pictures must have been politically motivated. And indeed they were–some blatant, others were more subtle.

One variation of the illustration image showing children rolling hoops and playing catch

Illustration that faces the playing children in the 1941 edition

Nowhere in the first edition of 1923 are children shown engaged in political activity. Some version of an image showing children rolling hoops and playing catch appears in all the editions in Cotsen that I looked at, but it faces different material in each case.

In the 1941 edition illustrated by Ernst Kutzer, for example, the idyllic illustration is opposite an overtly propagandistic picture of a school yard where two boys are raising the national flag while their fellow students and teacher stand by respectfully. This is entirely in keeping with the color portrait of Hitler that precedes it.

Illustration in 1941 edition that depicts an anniversary celebration of the 1923 Beer Hall Putsch

Illustration from 1941 edition, showing a family listening to a war-time radio broadcast

Two other images in the 1941 edition encourage children consider themselves one with the Nazi Party. Page 28 depicts an anniversary celebration of the November 9, 1923 Beer Hall Putsch, which took place in front of the Feldherrnhalle in Munich. There are no children among the spectators. But the caption, which is flanked by flaming pylons commemorating Hitler’s followers killed during the abortive uprising, urges young readers to be brave and true to the cause.

Facing it is an illustration of a mother and three children listening to a radio broadcast, rapt during the performance of “Deutschland, Deutschland uber alles.” Father is presumably away at war.

It was these three pictures and the portrait of Hitler that had been cut out of our patron’s copy of Mein Buch.

St. Nicholas, as depicted in the 1923 edition

Treats left by St. Nicholas, and the naughty fruit

I also noticed some interesting changes in the illustrations about Christmas that seemed consistent with the Nazis’ emphasis on celebrating the holiday in the “authentic” German manner. Hans Volkert’s picture in the 1923 edition shows St. Nicholas carrying a lantern and marching along in the dark, with a switch for punishing bad children clearly visible under his arm. Just a few presents peep out of his bag and one from his pocket.

It is accompanied by two verses: the first imploring the saint to empty his bag at the singer’s house; and the second listing all the treats he left behind, with a jolly cartoon of the fruits being punished for their naughtiness over the past year.

Knecht Ruprecht, in color, replaces St. Nicholas in the 1941 edition

The revised poem in the 1941 edition

In the spirit of reclaiming Christmas for the nation, Knecht Ruprecht, who accompanies Nicholas on his rounds according to German folklore, stands in for the Dutch saint in the 1941 edition. Knecht Ruprecht’s bag is literally bursting with toys and sweets and the switch is tied to the staff like another seasonal decoration.

The poem thanking Ruprecht for his generosity in rewarding good children says nothing about punishment….

Preface to the post-war edition, printed in English and German Fraktur, stating that its “issue does not imply that it is entirely suitable”

St Nikolaus returns, here with cozier and miter, printed in black-and-white, presumably due to post-war austerity

Mein Buch was deNazified when Allied Expeditionary Forces occupied Germany after the Third Reich fell, down to the images of Christmas. The image of the children playing is reprinted in black and white and it faces a notice in English and German stating that this book’s contents are suspect, but that it can be used until that time when better ones can replace it.

St. Nikolaus the Dutch saint returns in a new flowered robe and carrying an even bigger bag with still more toys spilling out of it.

All these changes to Mein Buch suggests just how important a standard elementary schoolbook can be to a political regime–or occupying force–looking to create loyalty in tomorrow’s citizens.

]]>https://blogs.princeton.edu/cotsen/2012/07/illustrating-a-primary-school-textbook-between-world-wars-hans-bruckls-mein-buch/feed/1“Children, Brandy Is a Bad Liquor!”https://blogs.princeton.edu/cotsen/2012/05/children-brandy-is-a-bad-liquor/
https://blogs.princeton.edu/cotsen/2012/05/children-brandy-is-a-bad-liquor/#commentsMon, 21 May 2012 13:10:00 +0000http://blogs-preview.princeton.edu/cotsen/2012/05/21/children-brandy-is-a-bad-liquor/Continue reading →]]>In 1794 Bernard Christian Faust (1755-1842), the court physician in the German principality of Schaumberg-Lippe, published a book designed to teach children the principles of healthy living. Its title was Gesundheits Katechismus zu Gebrauche in den Schulen und beym häuslichen Unterrichte. The same year it was translated into English by John Henry Basse under the title A Catechism of Health. A Dublin edition also came out in 1794. An Edinburgh edition was issued in 1797 with a commendation by the eminent physician James Gregory as the best extant popular work of medicine he had seen. The translation also quickly found a receptive public in America.

Cotsen has just acquired a copy of the first English translation. It is illustrated with the frontispiece of a boy wearing what looks like a long night shirt. A garment like this, Faust contended, was less confining and better for growing bodies than the usual corseted bodice and skirts. He claimed that “The body will become healthier, stronger, taller, and more beautiful; children will learn the best and most graceful attitudes; and will feel themselves very well and happy in this simple and free garment.”

Faust had equally strong opinions about what children should eat and drink. Or not drink. Notice that Faust drops the question-and-answer format the better to deliver a lecture to children about the dangers of consuming strong spirits. His vehemence on the subject of alcohol makes one wonder just how widespread underage drinking was during the late Enlightenment…

Here is an excerpt from the section on brandy:

Some of Faust’s other recommendations seem downright peculiar today. For example, he did not consider potatoes nutritious, cautioning his readers that “when eaten too often, or immoderately, prove hurtful to health, and to the mental faculties.” But undoubtedly plenty of advice in twenty-first century books on childcare and parenting that will strike later generations as just as ill-informed or quixotic!

]]>https://blogs.princeton.edu/cotsen/2012/05/children-brandy-is-a-bad-liquor/feed/1Marked up by Maurice: Unique Copies of Sendak’s Works in Cotsenhttps://blogs.princeton.edu/cotsen/2012/05/marked-up-by-maurice-unique-copies-of-sendaks-works-in-the-cotsen-childrens-library/
https://blogs.princeton.edu/cotsen/2012/05/marked-up-by-maurice-unique-copies-of-sendaks-works-in-the-cotsen-childrens-library/#commentsMon, 14 May 2012 18:24:12 +0000http://blogs-preview.princeton.edu/cotsen/2012/05/14/marked-up-by-maurice-unique-copies-of-sendaks-works-in-the-cotsen-childrens-library/Continue reading →]]>The passing of Maurice Sendak this week prompted a review of Cotsen’s holdings for a few special things to share with his many admirers.

The Cotsen Children’s Library at Princeton University holds a historical and international research collection of children’s books and materials in over thirty languages, including more than 45,000 items of Chinese, Japanese, Korean, and Vietnamese cultural artifacts that reflect the history of childhood in diverse sociopolitical and cultural contexts in the East. In addition to children’s books and magazines, the Cotsen Library has collected a rich array of printed matter and ephemera oriented for youth, including textbooks, comic books, educational wall charts, propaganda posters and broadsides, board games, cigarette cards, playing cards, as well as documents and manuscripts that captured children’s history and voices.

The earliest Chinese-language materials in the collection date from the late Ming dynasty (1368-1644), but the majority were published from the late Qing dynasty (1644-1911) to the present day. “Children’s literature,” defined as non-curriculum reading materials specifically targeting young people, did not take shape in China until the early 20th century. Western missionaries helped introduce the genre to China by bringing in modern movable type printing presses (initially in order to print the Bible) and soon starting to produce Sunday School papers in Chinese. This was well over 100 years after John Newbery published the now-famous The History of Little Goody Two-Shoes (1765) to entertain young minds in London. The tumultuous political and cultural dynamics of 20th-century China left indelible marks on children’s materials, which reveal both children’s historical reality and how the society had attempted to shaped young citizens’ perception and behavior.

One important area of Chinese holdings at Cotsen is children’s magazines. Dating mostly from the 1920s and after, this vibrant, relatively affordable, medium was quick to respond to China’s political dynamics. Some formats and genres of children’s materials at Cotsen are unique to the country. For example, during the 20th century, Chinese children collected cigarette cards that came free in cigarette packages, enjoyed looking at color images printed on them–at a time when color-illustrated children’s books were scarce and pricy for average families in the country–and they devised various competitive games to play with the cards. Another type of materials in Cotsen is Chinese illustrated story books, called 连环画 (lian huan hua), a hugely popular format of reading that entertained all ages but young people in particular.

Above: cover images of Chinese “lian huan hua”

Lian huan hua, or illustrated story books and comics, were read by both adults and youth in China, where literacy rate was low for the better half of the 20th century. Many poorly-educated adults relied on pictures to make sense of the stories. The format was cheaply available through rental facilities, reaching widely to neighborhoods in cities and remote rural areas.

The library recently launched a one-year project to improve the catalog records of Chinese-language children’s materials. Items touched by this project will have a more comprehensive and accurate description in the online library catalog, allowing researchers to search key fields by both pinyin Romanization and the original Chinese scripts. Through the project, we also hope to uncover some of the hidden gems in the collection.

Current exhibition: High over Asia

In “High over Asia: Politicization of the Sky,” the current exhibition at the Cotsen Gallery, we showcase Chinese and Japanese primers, illustrated children’s books, magazines, poster, and game boards that convey a changing perception of the sky over a span of more than a century. In these materials–dating from the mid-nineteenth century to the end of the twentieth century–the sky is transformed from a mythical space, to the territory of air force technology and space science, to the battle area of World War II and the Cold War, and back to a harmonious reunion between science and imagination. Goddesses, parachutists, and the Space Race all found their way into Chinese and Japanese children’s reading, play, identity formation, and political socialization.

The exhibition opened on December 7, 2011, and will continue until June 4, 2012.

Poster: A Visitor in Outer Space, featured in the “High over Asia” exhibition.

A somewhat androgynous boy visits outer space in a jet pack. His big eyes, round pink cheeks, red lips, and chubby torso recall traditional depictions of idealized babies in Chinese New Year prints (年画, or “nian hua”). Having just put the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution (1966-1976) to an end, Chinese political authority no longer designated “class struggle” as the nation’s priority in the 1980s. Children were encouraged to study hard and contribute to the Four Modernizations in agriculture, industry, science and technology, and national defense. In the background of this picture, spaceships carrying triumphant children travel along planetary orbits, inspiring young viewers of the poster to pursue the space dream.

Information for researchers

Are you looking for primary sources in the form of children’s literature and visual arts that shed light on how young people in Chinese have been educated, entertained, and socialized morally and politically? You can search for bibliographical records of Cotsen’s Chinese collection by pinyin Romanization and keywords in English in the online catalog of the Princeton University Library. A thorough guide on how to use the actual materials on-site can be found at “Accessing Special Collections.”

An eighteenth-century writer could try to realize some cash by dedicating a work to an important person, who might return the favor with some remuneration. Perhaps the anonymous author of the innovative speller, The Child’s New Play-Thing (London: T. Cooper, 1742), was angling for a teaching appointment when he dedicated it to little George, the son of Frederick, Prince of Wales (1709-1751).

A portrait engraved by Charles Moseley of the future George III (1738-1820) in a jaunty tricorne faced the third edition’s title page. Holding a rose, an emblem of the youth’s brevity, the stolid boy is the picture of solemn innocence. At the time around four years of age, little George was still wearing skirts and would not be breeched for another two or three years, as was usual in the days before the invention of the washing machine or of disposable diapers (the reasons don’t need to be detailed here).

George as reimagined as a bearded lady by a child-artist?

Being in skirts hardly granted immunity from the slings and arrows of disgruntled subjects if one happened to be second in line of succession to the British throne, as was the little prince. Long before George was crowned, plagued by his unruly brood of sons, and finally incapacitated by porphyria, he was disrespected by the unruly pen of a peer.

In the Cotsen copy of the 3rd edition of The Child’s New Play-Thing (1745), a previous owner traced the prince’s image in reverse on the frontispiece’s recto, adding scraggly whiskers and body parts (which look suspiciously female) the bodice is supposed to cover. The amateurish quality of the drawing suggests a child’s hand and perhaps that of a child from a family that hoped for the triumph of the Young Pretender, Prince Charles Edward Stuart in the 1745 Jacobite rebellion (the year the 3rd edition of The Child’s New Play-Thing was published) that was eventually quelled by George II’s son, William, Duke of Cumberland.

Hogarth’s homage to children’s “art” on The Analysis of Beauty

But of course the defacement of the little prince’s portrait may not be a youthful expression of disloyalty against the Hanovers (as tempting as it is to jump to conclusions). It may be nothing more profound than the tell-tale sign of the childish urge to doodle on any flat surface whether on paper or walls–an urge that William Hogarth must have known very well as a boy himself, having immortalized it in the lower right hand corner of the frontispiece to The Analysis of Beauty or in the foreground of “The First Stage of Cruelty.”

Publisher’s decorative cover for the 3rd ed. of Reynard; design is similar to the 1st ed. but in rust-colored cloth instead of earlier lilac.

In our last blog posting, I talked about some of the various “marks in books”: gift inscriptions, ownership inscriptions or owners’ signatures, booksellers’ marks, and “non-verbal” markings, or coloring, by children. What may seem like relatively inconsequential jottings, scribbled names, or even random markings can often provide important evidence of how a book was used by those who owned and/or read it. Some types of marks are of course more common than others, in both adult’s and children’s books. As David Pearson notes in Provenance Research in Book History, “hand-written inscriptions on title pages or flyleaves for the most frequently encountered evidence of provenance.”1 Pearson goes on to note that book owners frequently add other information too, such as the date or other details of acquisition (gift, purchase, prize reward, Christmas present, etc.). Pearson is writing about books for grown-ups, but his comments are equally applicable to children’s’ books, even though the “evidence” may be less systematically placed and harder to interpret.

We’ve all seen children’s books with signatures or inscriptions, often (but not always) on the inside paste-downs, free-endpapers, or title pages. But children are still acquiring “received ideas” of book culture or ownership, so their markings are perhaps more likely to be found in other parts of a book than these generally-accepted locations for adults’ markings. How do they/we actually learn this behavior, though? Perhaps someone explicitly taught some of us this bit of cultural behavior, but in many cases, I think that’s something we just pick up on our own, either by observation or intuition–it just seems to make sense. How many of us recall for certain how we learned this, though? That sort of uncertainty of memory is one of the challenges of working with marks in children’s books and interpreting them. As adults, we can see them, but the hows and whys behind their creation are conjectural in most cases, to those us now grounded in the critical world of “experience.”

Inked gift inscription in Cotsen copy on page with pencil markings from an apparent child-reader and a bookseller.

In Our Girls, we saw a gift inscription on the front free-endpaper verso, facing the title page, as well as inscriptions elsewhere, and other markings. In another recently-cataloged Cotsen Library book, The Rare Romance of Reynard the Fox (including The Shifts of Reynardine), we find a gift inscription in another traditional place: the front free-endpaper recto, facing the pastedown: “George Curtis, from his father, Christmas, 1879.” This is typically the first page we see when we open a book, so the placement here makes perfect sense, at least to an adult, who seems to be the inscriber here: the father of George Curtis, whose own first name is ironically lost to history at this point, one of the quirks of annotations in book history. It’s a nice script hand, with some discreetly decorative capitals and flourishes: note the capital letters “G” and “C” in “George Curtis” and the flourished “f” in “father”–tastefully understated, but special, as befits a Christmas present from father to son.

Detail of gift inscription: George Curtis, from his father, Christmas, 1879.

It’s also of course possible that George Curtis is himself the inscriber, recording a gift he received from his father–hence the omission of Pater Curtis’s name. The hand could be that of a mature boy of the time, and there possibly some indication of letters being gone over twice (the “G” in “George” and “t” in “Christmas”), but these latter features could also just be the product of a stubborn fountain pen (remember those?), and my money is on the father.

Title page for the 3rd ed., including edition statement and Cassell’s Paris office.

Apart from telling us about the (presumably) original owner of this book, the gift-giver, and the occasion, this inscription adds a date too: 1879. This is significant bibliographic information in this case because the title page of this book does not include a publication date, although it does note that this is the “Third Edition.” Also noted on the title page are Cassell’s three different offices at the time of publication: London, Paris, and New York. This is significant too, because the firm opened its Paris office in 1871 (adding a Melbourne office in 1884),2 and it published under the imprint “Cassell, Petter & Galpin” from 1859 to 1879.3 Based on that publishing history information and the inscription, we can date the third edition of the Rare Romance of Reynard the Fox, as issued between 1871 and 1879, probably closer to 1879, when it was inscribed, but with no way of knowing that for certain without additional, external evidence.

Accordingly, I’ve dated Cotsen’s third edition as “[not after 1879],” rather than “[between 1871 and 1879],” to indicate the likelihood of it being published closer to the later date. If there was no inscription, I’d probably have to date the edition as [between 1871 and 1884], based on the inclusion of Paris but absence of Melbourne on the title page–accurate but a little less precise. (Some catalogers would still opt to date the book as “between 1871 and 1884,” but I think “not after 1879″ provides more useful information for researchers trying to distinguish editions and their dates–particularly with that information reflected catalog coding of the 008 field, which determines date sorting, at least in Princeton’s OPAC .)

First page of publisher’s advertisements including Cassell’s Paris office and advertisement code.

Additional information relevant to dating this book is found in publisher’s codes at the foot of page 221, the last page of text, and at the foot of the first page of the publisher’s advertisement at the end of the book: “374” and “7AI74,” respectively. These both point to an 1874 date, but that could be the date of printing, not actual publication. The text pages might have been printed earlier and conceivably even repurposed from an earlier edition (Cotsen’s first edition of Reynard has the same number of pages in the text, as presumably did the second, which I’ve not myself seen). A close analysis of the titles listed in the publisher’s advertisement could yield additional information about the date of publication, one of the reasons why these are now regarded as important pieces of bibliographic information and routinely noted in rare book catalog records and pagination collations. That was not always the practice; once, advertisements went uncataloged and sometimes they were even physically excised altogether, especially during library binding; the copy of the first edition of Reynard in Princeton’s general stacks lacks the advertisements altogether, which were presumably removed during later library rebinding.

Title page for the 1st ed.; note differences in imprint info from the 3rd ed.

Another copy of the first edition, in the Cotsen collection, still in its original lilac cloth publisher’s binding (with a design similar to the third edition), retains the advertisements. Unfortunately, records of additional copies of Reynard in OCLC include only hypothetical dates, and none of these notes the edition. At least one bibliographic source identifies this edition of Reynard as having first been published with Griset’s illustrations in 1869.4 (As an aside, one of the amazing things about a collection like Princeton’s is that fact that “reading copies” of books like this can be checked out to read–so I’m now reading about the “japes and bourdes” of Reynard at home, thanks to that copy. Quite a story…) Cassell’s version of Reynard was a popular book–the fact that it went through at least three different editions with the publisher testifies to that. Part of this popularity no doubt stemmed from its “coloured illustrations,” credited to Ernst Griset, a Victorian-era illustrator of no slight renown (and two illustrated plates are signed by him).

Plate facing p. 154: “The Fox Throws Down His Gage” challenging the wolf in front of King Lion.

A look at Griset’s work here shows why it was popular–the crafty Reynard and the other animals are compellingly portrayed and characterized. But part of the book’s appeal is the compelling story of Reynard itself, first published in English by Caxton in 1481 as one of the earliest books printed in England, and based on a Dutch version of the story from “nearly six centuries ago,” according to Samuel Phillips Day in his preface to this “one-syllable” edition (written in 1869, so the story of Reynard is now seven centuries old and counting!). Contemporary scholars think the figure of Reynard originated in Alsace-Lorraine and that the name is derived from the German “Reginhard,” or “strong or crafty counsel.” Foxes have been associated with guile, craftiness, or slyness since the very earliest tales we have–just think of Aesop’s Fables or the fox-like, wily Odysseus.5

Detail showing Griset’s signature on one of two signed plates, although all six are credited to him.

The character of Reynard in this story is further portrayed as a fast-talking, treacherous trickster–the trickster a recurrent late medieval archetype–an aspect Griset captures well in his illustrations. Would you buy a used car from this fox?

Caxton’s Reynard was not intended as a children’s story but rather a moral exemplum, meant to teach virtuous behavior via an engaging fable. Presumably though, children read the story, or were at least told some oral version of it–a panoply of talking animals, a regal court ruled by a lion (always popular in England!), good and bad exemplars in action would all have appealed to children of all ages. But Reynard, like many comparable stories, was adapted specifically for child-readers. Day’s “one syllable” version uses simplified words and hyphenated versions of longer words (even “Li-on”) in the manner of similar adaptations of “classics” for children: A Pilgrim’s Progress, Robinson Crusoe, or Gulliver’s Travels, for instance. A look at the first page of his text gives us an idea of how this style actually reads–better than a “one-syllable” text might seem in the abstract, which is generally true of similar adaptations I’ve seen.

Beginning of text, comprised primarily of the “one-syllable” words, with longer words hyphenated into syllables.

As a final provenance-related aspect of interest, the copy of (the first edition of) Reynard in Princeton’s general stacks has an embossed ownership stamp from the library of the “College of New Jersey,” the name by which Princeton was known until officially renamed in 1896. This gives us some idea of when the book was added to the library, but we don’t know for certain why a “one syllable” adaptation of Reynard was added to the University’s collection. Was it because Reynard was such a renowned story? Or perhaps because it was seen as such a strong moral tale, especially for college students, in a era when morality was inseparable from education? Was it perhaps seen as a complement to other versions of Reynard, for grown-ups, in the library, or as a notable adoption of Caxton’s early English version? Was it because Griset’s illustrations were so admired at a time when his reputation was perhaps at its height? Or was it just a recent “best-seller” that a librarian thought might both delight and teach college students? We’ll never know for sure, but that shouldn’t prevent us from savoring the book we have before us now. That’s certainly what I’m doing, and isn’t that really the point of any book, either for children or grown-ups?

Library stamp on title page of Princeton’s general collection copy of Reynard (1st. ed), noting “The College of New Jersey,” the University’s name until changed in 1896.

Simon Houfe, The Dictionary of 19th Century British Book Illustrators and Caricaturists, 1996.

“Reynard Cycle,” Wikipedia; accessed Aug. 26, 2011.

]]>https://blogs.princeton.edu/cotsen/2011/10/more-marks-in-childrens-books/feed/0Marks in Children’s Bookshttps://blogs.princeton.edu/cotsen/2011/07/marks-in-childrens-books/
https://blogs.princeton.edu/cotsen/2011/07/marks-in-childrens-books/#commentsThu, 28 Jul 2011 21:04:32 +0000http://blogs-preview.princeton.edu/cotsen/2011/07/28/marks-in-childrens-books/Continue reading →]]>Marks that readers make in their books has been an area of interest to book historians for some time, particularly since Roger Stoddard’s 1985 Marks in Books. They provide evidence of how people actually used their books and what they thought about them. Some readers note the dates each time they read, which tells us how frequently they read and how much reading was done in a sitting. Some note questions, indicating how they responded to their reading. And some make comments, indicating agreement or disagreement with the text being read. Some readers make marks not consisting of words at all: shorthand symbols, doodles, faces and figures, or copies of the illustrations printed in the book. These can be especially hard for book historians to interpret, especially in the case of children’s markings, because they are not in words.

Cover of Our Girls: Stories for the Young (London: Routledge, [not before 1888]).

Yet marks in children’s books–annotations, pictures, squiggles, or coloring of printed illustrations–are increasingly seen as an important avenue for book-historians to gauge how little readers–sometimes “pre-literate”–actually used their books and how they may have responded to them. M. O. Grenby’s recent book, The Child Reader, uses inscriptions and marginalia, along with other sources, such as diaries, to reconstruct child-readers’ experiences.

A recently-cataloged Cotsen Library book, Routledge’s Our Girls: Stories for the Young, has some readers’ marks that provide considerable evidence of use by those who previously handled the book.

Frontispiece ill. (signed by Stoddard) hand-colored by a child-reader.

Like many children’s books, especially those published by Routledge or Warne, this book isn’t dated; the 1888 date is based on the dates that Routledge was active under the imprint “George Routledge and Sons, Ltd.” and on the date that the firm opened up their New York offices (1889). A collection of stories and poems for children, Our Girls is extensively illustrated with wood-engravings, many occupying a full page, signed by well-known engravers and illustrators, such as the Dalziel Brothers, Edmund Evans, Alfred Thomas, E.J. Walker, Lizzie Lawson, Robert Barnes, Joseph Blamire, and others.

For a mass-produced Routledge title from this period, this book is surprisingly rare today, no other copy being found in OCLC, the world-wide library catalog (although other similar titles were found, suggesting a possible series of related books).

But our interest here is in the marks made in this book by those who handled it after it came from the publisher. There are three different sorts.

A gift inscription on the first leaf of the book, the front free endpaper, apparently in an attractive adult hand: “Blanche, from Fansie.” Above this, in the upper right corner are some pencil markings, presumably by a book dealer: “B51539, 15 [stuck out], 10″

Another pencil inscription on the last leaf of the book, facing the last illustration, apparently from a child reader that reads: “Faustina Freeman”

Apart from written annotations, a number (but by no means all) of the illustrations in the book have been colored, presumably by a child-reader.

Inscriptions on first and last pages of the book and title page hand-coloring by a child reader.

What can the annotations and/or markings in this particular book tell us about the book itself, its readers, or how child-readers interacted with the book? For starters, there are several marks–of different types–apparently made by different people at different times. Taken together, they constitute quite a bit of evidence of possession and actual use by owners or readers. This, in turn, tells us that this book did indeed serve “the purpose for which it was created”: to be actively handled, valued, and used, presumably by child–the second name and the colored illustrations evidence this.

Multiple inscriptions suggest that this book mattered to people–both to a consumer who bought it, or otherwise obtained it, and then gave it as a gift, presumably to a child, its intended audience, and to another child reader, who inscribed it. One person (Fansie) thought it worthwhile to note giving it as a gift, and a second, a child (Faustina), then, in effect, laid “claim” to it as her own by signing it herself. The gift inscription is, in part, a product of its era and the culture of literacy and book-use at that time. People signed their books, both as owners and donors, something they seem to do less often today. (When was the last time that you inscribed a book?).

Gift inscriptions from adults to children are relatively common in Cotsen’s nineteenth-century and early-twentieth-century books, even though they are found in a relatively small percentage of the Library’s total holdings, reminding us, as Grenby points out, that inscribed book are still the exception, not the rule. Nor do we know for certain if inscribed books were retainedat a higher rate than those without marks, although this seems plausible.Inscribed books were, after all, used and presumably given a measure of attention and respect from their owners, so it’s reasonable to infer that they were kept, and even passed along to other people, as seems to be the case with Our Girls. But we just don’t know how truly “representative” a sample they provide of all books published.

Gift Inscription: Blanche, from Fansie.

Apart from evidencing one received tradition of nineteenth-century book-culture, this inscription suggests that “Fansie” thought that making the gift of this little book was important enough to record this fact for the recipient–and for posterity; after all, she wrote in pen. This wouldn’t have been a terribly expensive gift book when new, but it’s not a cheap, semi-disposable pamphlet either. It was meant to last a while, possibly through several readers. From the fact of the inscription, we might also infer that books mattered to Fansie and that “Blanche” was a child who mattered to her personally, as well. Why bother inscribing a book casually passed off to a semi-stranger?

Fansie’s hand is nicely-formed, with an attractively decorative capital “B”, possibly suggesting a well-educated inscriber, or at least one well-schooled in script penmanship. She thus seems to be a member of the educated English middle-class that valued books and reading for children, as an increasing number of people seemed to do in the latter part of the nineteenth century. Adults were willing to spend money on books for children that weren’t strictly pedagogical or overtly religious, and publishers like Routledge were eager to supply this expanding market.

Bookseller’s notation: inventory number and prices.

The other annotations on the page appear to be inventory code and price codes, written by a used bookseller or antiquarian dealer. These are typically made in pencil, to avoid “defacing” the book, and are sometimes also found on a page at the end. The meaning of the inventory number is lost to us, but the price information does tell us how much the bookseller charged for it–and also suggests that it wasn’t a fast-seller, because the price appears to have been knocked down by 50%! Perhaps this was due to the condition of the embrittled paper or a lack of appeal by the anonymous stories, or both? Since we don’t know the exact date when these price notations date were made, it’s hard to be sure how revealing they are, but, clearly, it was not a tremendously expensive item for a collector, even thirty years ago (even if the price refers to British pounds, not American dollars). Oddly enough, the “lack of appeal” is quite possibly due to the very markings under discussion, which used to be regarded as flaws or “imperfections” by dealers and collectors–and sometimes still are–since the annotations are not by important people (insofar as we know, anyway), they’re not “literary” or terribly revealing in personal terms, and some collectors and scholars regard coloring as tantamount to defacing illustrations by rendering them no longer “as issued” when a book was published.

Inscription facing last illustration: Faustina Freeman.

The other inscription in this book was done by a child: Faustina Freeman. It’s location is somewhat unusual: on a blank page at the end of the book, facing the last illustration. Why here? Usually, such a name inscription arrears on a page at the beginning of the book. But notations certainly can appear throughout a book, particularly in one with a lot of other inscriptions. We don’t even know for certain who actually wrote it, but it seems reasonable to assume it was Miss Faustina herself, signing her name. Perhaps she was just using a conveniently blank page to practice writing or signing her name. (This happens fairly frequently in children’s books from both the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. In cases like that, though, there are usually other writings in a book.) It’s also possible that the little girl was imitating adult practice of signing a book to indicate her ownership but just hadn’t yet learned that book-ownership convention put such signings at the beginning of the book. There’s no way to know for sure, but whatever the case, signing your name is a claim of sorts, telling anyone else seeing the book that “It’s mine” or at least “I was here.”

First full-page ill. that is hand-colored (p. [7]), to show two blond girls.

The hand-coloring of eight wood-engraved illustrations is too roughly done, and also too sporadic, to have been done by a publisher. But they all do seem to have been done by the same child-reader. This coloring of printed illustrations in the book is a clear sign of a child’s use of it and an indication of a her response to it, albeit not in the form of writing or inscriptions, which are generally easier for adults studying book-history to interpret. Do these colorings indicate the child’s engagement with the book and its contents or a lack of engagement and distraction? Are they evidence of interest, perhaps by a child not yet able to write, or some sort of graffiti, showing disdain? Of course, there’s no way to know for certain. But I would argue that this hand-coloring shows engagement with the book–after all, it is quite neat and it’s also nicely artistic. While child-like, the colorings are well within the outlines–something a very young child usually can’t manage–and many of them show an awareness of appropriate colors. Hair is usually colored yellow and wood is brown, for instance.

Two hand-colorings, both foregrounding the girls in the illustrations with color.

Interestingly, virtually every illustration that is colored depicts a young girl, and hair coloring is always yellow, suggesting the handiwork of a young girl, perhaps four to seven years of age, and one with blond hair. (I know of at least one little blond book-lover who almost always colored the children she drew with yellow hair, intending that they should look just like her!) In two illustration (one depicting a girl and a boy together and one showing a little girl and her nanny) only the girl is colored, foregrounding her and leaving the other figures as background figures, perhaps indicating the way they were perceived by the little artist.

The coloring ends after the unnumbered page [19], with eight illustrations totally or partly colored-in. Did the young artists lose interest in either coloring, or the book itself? Or did she put the book aside, intending to come back another day? And was she Blanche, to whom the book was inscribed? Or was it Faustina who signed the book? We’ll probably never know, but whatever the case–and whoever the artist–she left clear evidence of unmistakable use for us to see–and to learn from. We have no idea if she was engaged with the stories in the book or even if she actually read them–or even if she could read. But she obviously was engaged by the illustrations, and her use of the book is still clear and unmistakable–and it has been fortunately preserved for posterity.

The three other illustrations in Our Girls that have been hand-colored by a child, including two more blond girls. Note how the first (not a full-page ill.) is the only one colored that does not feature a little girl.

Postscript (Dec. 14, 2011)

The great grandniece of Faustina Freeman, who read this Cotsen blog posting, has kindly supplied some more information about Ms. Freeman.

Faustina Freeman was born in Provincetown, Massachusetts in 1886, the daughter of Prince Freeman and Dorinda Cook Young. She grew up in Provincetown, on Cook Street and was educated at Boston College, class of 1909, the University of California, Berkeley (1912), and Simmons College, Boston, in Library Science (1914). She was a teacher for many years and died in New Brunswick, New Jersey.

The book with Ms. Freeman’s signature, now in the Cotsen Library collection, was probably owned by her as a child, not as a teacher for use with her students; she probably she taught students who were a bit more mature than the book’s intended audience.

Faustina Freeman was also active in the Provincetown Art Association as an adult, and her descendant still holds small oil paintings in the family collection that she created, so the artwork on display in this book may well have been a harbinger of her adult interests and talents.

One of my favorite old Twilight Zone episodes imagines what happens to department store mannequins “after hours”: they come to life with human interactions and desires–including the desire to see the world of real people outside the store… Rod Serling was widely (and rightly) praised for imagining the interior lives of inanimate objects, animating them, and imbuing them with “humanity.”

Tenniel’s famed illustrations of anthropomorphized playing cards in Alice in Wonderland.

Yet a reader of nineteenth-century children’s books will find nothing all that startling about inanimate objects coming to life. We’re all familiar with the pack of playing cards that springs to life in Alice in Wonderland led by the notorious Queen of Hearts (“Off with her head!”)–although truth be told, animated playing cards appeared earlier, in William Newbery’s History of the King and Queen of Spades (published in the early 1800s).

And several relatively early Warne toy book titles present similar imaginative renderings, using the toy book’s unusual synergy between text and illustrations. In Warne’s Jack in the Box (issued between 1866 and 1881), a Christmas gift jack-in-the-box magically seems to animate himself and he adopts a changing series of different costumes and personas:sailor, grenadier, ploughman, carpenter, jester, harlequin, and back into a sailor. Three-quarter page chromoxylographs vividly present the changes described in the verse text and show the children audience’s delight at them.

Frontispiece ill. depicts Violet as a doll handed over to Fanny, and last ill. returns Violet to an inanimate state as Fanny the now-mature Fanny passes her along.

And in Warne’s Life of a Doll, issued between 1867 and 1868, Violet, the doll belonging to a little girl named Fanny, is presented as a play-thing in England who somehow comes to life and accompanies her mistress on a journey overseas when Fanny’s colonel father deploys to India. As Fanny’s constant traveling companion–much like other female traveling companions common in fiction of the time–Violet “becomes a great traveler” and is pictured visiting “exotic” sights in Indiaand later being received at the French court,” where she receives a diamond locket from Empress Eugenie, who has “heard of the little English girl’s walking doll.”(Eugenie fled France for England in 1870 with the onset of the Franco-Prussian War, which would seemingly confirm a publication date before then.) But after Fanny’s family returns to England a number of years later, the now-older Fanny “no longer cared to play with dolls,” so she gives Violet to her younger cousin, Amelia.

Fairly standard narrative fare, but extended here by the accompanying graphical element. Violet is first described and pictured as an inanimate doll. Then, the text narrates that Violet “stood up” by Fanny at a party, and most of the chromoxylographed illustration panels in the story depict her as an ambulatory active entity, magically imbued with the ability to move through means unspecified. The very last quarter-page illustration presents her as a mere doll again though, as she is being handed over to a new owner, thus returning her to the inanimate state she had at the beginning of the story.

What sort of imaginative alchemy, or narrative “instability,” is this? The apparent answer, I think, lies in the last lines of text, which tell us that Fanny herself “wrote this life of a doll,” so she is the fictive author of the narrative. But while the text may be Fanny’s, the illustrations seemingly present what she herself imaginatively experiences when her doll “comes to life.” A reader could read Fanny’s text alone as a child’s figurative speaking while daydreaming about playing with her favorite doll (just think of how most American Girl advertisements present girls and their dolls). But the illustrations clearly show Violet as a moving, apparently living, entity–and they thus add a literal aspect to the overall presentation of her coming to life.

Most ills. present Violet as “a walking doll,” as when she amazes the “Hindoos,” who bow in homage, or receives a locket from the Empress. Perhaps Fanny’s child’s imagination is the transformative force?

Illustration in Life of a Doll thus functions in an almost metatextual way, commenting on the text and expanding its meaning to a reader/viewer in a way that seemingly goes far beyond the role we usually assign to illustrations “depicting” a narrative or “accompanying” it.

It shouldn’t really surprise us that the imaginative feats in Life of a Doll and Jack in the Box take place in are heavily-illustrated “toy books,” any more than it should that Alice is virtually inconceivable without Tenniel’s illustrations. Words alone can hardly convey the amazing spectacle of objects coming to life without the imaginative aid of vivid illustrations, in particular to a child reader perhaps more inclined to read a text and the events it describes more literally that an adult would. Words use rhetorical or language-based devices, such as simile or metaphor, to describe events and bring them to life; illustration depicts life, or at least one way of rendering it. The modes of presentation–and the reader-perceiver’s negotiation with them–are thus different, and expansively open-ended to new meanings, potentially complementary, but still new and different and potentially independent of the text.

Speaking of anthropomorphized entities, children’s books of course abound with all sorts of animals dressing, speaking, and acting like people, particularly in the late nineteenth- and early twentieth centuries. Think of the works of Beatrix Potter or Kenneth Grahame’s The Wind in the Willows. Then, of course, there are older, traditional fairy stories like TheWhite Cat, The Hind in the Wood, or The Frog Prince, the last two famously reimagined by Walter Crane in his toy book series. The list of animals dressed up and acting like people–often reenacting human frailties and foibles in a satiric manner–goes on and on. (Just think of all the personified animals in Aesop’s Fables.)

Walter Crane’s “blushing Rose” (Queen Summer) Inspired by Mrs. Rose?

Plants may be “less fertile ground” (sorry!) for such imaginative renderings, and there seem to be far fewer instances where we find them brought to life in children’s books. But Crane imagines worlds of animated plants sprung to life in Flora’s Feast (1889) and Queen Summer (1891)–which he both wrote and illustrated, again suggesting how language and image–the verbal and the visual–can be conjoint in presenting objects, or at least plants, as they become animated. Queen Flora and Queen Summer both waken their plant dominions, which come forth in masque-like processions of animated courtly flowers and plants, presented in brilliant chromoxylographed colors, thanks to the printing of Edmund Evans. Color-printed work like that wouldn’t have been technically possible just a relatively few years before Crane rendered them.

Frontispiece of Mrs. Rose (with family members?) planning her party.

Despite the pleasure of having worked with titles by Crane and Carroll via my Cotsen cataloging, John Harris’s The Rose’s Breakfast still came as a surprise and a delight when I came across it recently. In this story, envious shrubs and flowers, having heard of the delights of ThePeacock at Home, The Butterfly’s Ball, The Grasshopper’s Feast, and The Elephant’s Ball (all works in which insects and animals spring to personified life for festive rites) plan a “gala” of their own, organized by Mrs. Rose.

The anonymous author of TheRose’s Breakfast imagines a problem though–and a deliciously imaginative solution. Flowers “want the organs of speech” so how can such an event be organized? Simple: Mrs. Rose, “in high beauty” issues invitations by “send[ing] out her fragrance to invite the company” of plants and flowers. But what of Mr. Rose, identified as “Mr. Pluto Rose”? (A Pluto Rose is a type of very dark red, late-seasoned-blooming, flat-petaled rose.) Well, the author tells us that “he never interfered with the pursuits of his wife; he only declared he should not appear, and as he was “a very dark-looking Rose without any sweet,” the writer tells us, and Mrs. Rose is “delighted at the declaration,” so she can have a free hand in her society machinations. (Intimations of the revenge of Persephone on her dark, reclusive consort?)

The stout Lord Oak, with Britannic lion and his fleet in the background.

Much planning for the party of the season ensures, entailing the assistance of Mrs. Larch and Lady Acacia, the latter eager to introduce “her niece Robinia from America” to society. Visitors from abroad accept, including “all the cedars and firs,” except for Mrs. Larch’s “cousin from Lebanon” and even all the forest trees agree to attend, except the haughty Lord Oak, depicted in his Nelsonesque Napoleonic admiral’s uniform, who “never condescended to go to such meetings.”

The breakfast party enjoys quite a cast of characters, beautifully illustrated in hand-colored engravings and wittily described, among them, Mrs. Birch, “dressed with an elegant lightness of drapery,” Lady Aspen, “continually shaking her leaves as if she was twittering,” the “famous Roses” (all the Henrys, Edwards and Richard the Third), Mrs. Myrtle, Lady Orange-Tree, Lord Heliotropium, Mr. Monkey-Plant, the Evergreens of rank and nobility, “many Laurels,” Mrs. Lily with her elegant head-dress, Lord Tulip with the Duchess of Hyacinth, and Lady Sensitive.

Lady Sensitive quivers at her invitation, but not in sweet anticipation.

Much like Shelley’s description of Lady Sensitive’s namesake in his poem, “The Sensitive Plant” (first published in 1820), Lady Sensitive is illustrated as a Plain Jane with a simple dress, or as Shelley described her: having “no bright flower” since “radiance and odour are not its dower… It desires what it has not, the beautiful.” The similar presentation of the sensitive plant and 1820 publication date of Shelley’s poem invite the question: Did Shelley read the anonymous Rose’s Breakfast, which first appeared in 1808, when the poet would have been only sixteen years old, and perhaps take inspiration from it?

But amidst all the splendor of The Rose’s Breakfast’s plant-world’s version of “society” in its finery, some guests do not behave with appropriate decorum: Mrs. Ivy is too clinging to her social betters, the Hothouse plants socialize only in their own circle,” and “the Nettles, Thistles, and Firge were very troublesome.” And some plants are not honored with invitations at all, as Mrs. Rose’s breakfast apes courtly standards; the entire Kitchen Garden is left off the guest list, “notwithstanding the elegant simplicity” of many of them. Brilliant floral raiment trumps personality or merit in Mrs. Rose’s considerations.

Some members of the Kitchen Garden, pictured as distinctly working class.

Among those disappointed are: Mrs. Onion, Mrs. Cabbage, Mr. Bean–all depicted as distinctly working class–and Mrs. Bramble, the latter who “was very sharp at not being invited.” Also left off the guest list are: many “perennials,” apparently being somewhat past their peak at this time of year, and the Misses Crocus, Violet, and Jonquil, and Mrs. Almond because “their beauty was gone by.” Clearly Mr’s Rose’s event is an summertime English garden party!

The social trials and tribulations of hostessing ultimately prove almost too much for Mrs. Rose, much like a contemporary, society-obsessed Jane Austen social butterfly. She becomes “so fatigued” by “her dissipation” that she completely loses her bloom and comes out “no more this season.” She is saved only by the professional ministrations of Dr. Gardener and the lavish care of her maid, Valerian, who presumably exerts a suitably calming effect on her frazzled mistress. Notably, neither of these pivotal, but simply-attired characters is presented to us in an illustration–vanity, vanity…

The “instructional” moral of the “amusing” dazzle of words and illustrations in the story finally becomes explicit, although there have certainly been strong intimations of this beforehand. It is only with “the greatest difficulty” that the struggling Dr. Gardener manages to “keep her [Mrs. Rose] properly clothed” (imitations of a distracted King Lear?) via an enforced “confinement.” Despite everything, Mrs. Rose remains “a slave to fashion, and nearly became one of its martyrs.” Apparently incorrigible, she “still possesses so much vanity and lightness of manner” that she obeys Dr. Gardener only because of Pluto Rose’s injunction about “propriety”, but we readers know better, having learned our lesson. While Mrs. Rose has apparently learned nothing from her travails, we have been instructed by the events in the story, as well as thoroughly delighted by its interplay of language and illustration.

Publication History Note:The Rose‘s Breakfast was issued by Harris in a single edition of 1808, printed by Henry Bryer, an apparent testimony to its lack of lasting popularity with readers. (In contrast, TheButterfly’s Ball and The Peacock at Home, both went through quite a number of Harris editions after their initial printings.)

The Rose‘s Breakfast was later included in F.V. Lucas’s collection of late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century stories: Forgotten Tales of Long Ago (c. 1906), where Lucas, in his Introduction, termed it: “poverty-stricken in fancy and very paltry in tone.” Lucas added: “I am amazed to think I ever marked it for inclusion [in the collection] at all … the idea of making beautiful flowers as mean-spirited as trumpery men and women can be being totally undesirable [but] it was too late to take it out… Possibly its badness may incite someone to write a better, and that would be my justification.”

Paroy’s engraving is printed on a single sheet of paper and trimmed to a circle 17.25 inches in diameter.

This marvelous circular engraving was taken out the other day while reorganizing the backlog of French prints. The dealer from whom it was purchased was somewhat puzzled as to what its purpose might have been. Were all the tiny figures designed to be cut out and used in découpage? But surely it would be difficult to do without damaging surrounding figures, even with a very steady hand and a very sharp pair of tiny scissors. And it really doesn’t look like a fancier kind of lottery print, where the images are laid out in a rectangular grid, which simplifies cutting out. So this seemed like a good time to try and find out a little more about this engraving.

Detail showing Aesop below the bust of La Fontaine.

The “Cte de Paroy,” who signed his name and the date 1789 (a significant year in French history!) below the bust of the seventeenth-century poet Jean de la Fontaine (1621-1695) at the center of the engraving, was actually the print’s engraver, not the publisher. Paroy’s full name was Jean Philippe Guy le Gentil, Comte de Paroy (1780-1824), and he was celebrated as a miniaturist. He also wrote a memoir of his eventful life, which can be read in the original French on Google Books. The figure of La Fontaine’s illustrious fabulist predecessor, the hunchbacked slave Aesop, appears below La Fontaine on the bust’s column-like plinth.

If Paroy was known for working on a small scale, then this print was probably intended to show off his skills. Dozens of scenes from La Fontaine’s fables are cunningly arranged with surprisingly little space between them. Yet Paroy has laid them out so skillfully that the effect is pleasing rather than overwhelming. It is a tour de force that designers of the modern puzzle picture, like Martin Handford, Jean Marzullo and Walter Wick, or armchair puzzle hunts like Kit Williams, might be intrigued to study.

Detail showing arrangement of various scenes.

We were delighted to find an image of the print in the collection section of the web site of the Musée Jean de la Fontaine, but were disappointed that it wasn’t possible to make detailed comparisons between the two copies. It was difficult to choose a handful of details for this posting, but we hope this gives you an idea of how beautifully the variety of subjects are presented.

On February 17-19, over 70 scholars, collectors, and bibliophiles gathered at Princeton for the 9th Cotsen conference on children’s books, organized by Andrea Immel of Princeton and Jill Shefrin of the University of London.

Cotsen Curator Andrea Immel welcomes participants.

Jill Shefrin presenting “A Delightful Recreation: for the Industrious: English Children School Pieces.”

The topic of this year’s conference was, “Enduring Trifles: Writing the History of Childhood with Ephemera,” and it explored the multi-faceted concept of “ephemera” with reference to children’s material culture, perceived needs, and prevailing constructs of childhood, pleasure, play, and learning.

The Shorter OED defines “ephemera” as an item “of short-lived interest or use … collectible items originally expected to have only short-term usefulness or popularity.” A fragile artifact can be defined as ephemeral, but similarly, if its content is slight, its format or genre perceived as trivial, or it reflects contemporary events of passing interest, it can be considered ephemeral. The word also has another key meaning with respect to children’s things: an object or text can be ephemeral by design if conceived for use during a particular stage in a young person’s cognitive or social development.

Jenna Weissman Josselit presenting “Baby in the Bulrushes: Moses in the American Imagination.”

Speakers from various institutions world-wide — including the Bodleian Library, the Victoria & Albert Museum of Childhood, Newcastle University, and the University of Toronto — explored various aspects of ephemera, thus broadly conceived, in papers such as: “Caught in the Moment: Current Events in Eighteenth-century Children Books,” “Goodrich’s Grab Bag & Visualizing the Natural World for the Young,” “Fuller Paper Doll Books: Interactive Design and Gender(ed) Play,” “Child-Authored Poetry in the Late Eighteenth Century,” and “‘A Colony of Puffins:’ Documenting a Reading Community.” A full listing of papers and presenters and a PDF of the conference schedule (designed by Isabella Palowich of Artisa LLC)are both available on the conference website.

Alan Powers discussing children’s theater sets and characters.

The program also included two workshops where Alan Powers and Peter Cope utilized actual artifacts to discuss Juvenile Theaters and Dean’s Rag Books, respectively, and an actual Juvenile Toy Theater performance of Rip Van Winkle, by Dr. Neff’s Incredible Puppet Company, was followed by a behind-the-scenes look at the theater and its apparatus.

A behind-the-scenes look at juvenile theater sets and backdrops from George and Anne Neff, following their performance of Rip Van Winkle.

]]>https://blogs.princeton.edu/cotsen/2011/03/cotsen-conference-on-ephemera-february-17-19-2011/feed/1Book, Toy, Ephemera…?https://blogs.princeton.edu/cotsen/2011/02/book-toy-ephemera/
https://blogs.princeton.edu/cotsen/2011/02/book-toy-ephemera/#commentsTue, 08 Feb 2011 18:55:00 +0000http://blogs-preview.princeton.edu/cotsen/2011/02/08/book-toy-ephemera/Continue reading →]]>It’s easy to assume that there’s a clear, if perhaps only implicit, dividing line between books, toys, and ephemera. While we may not necessarily know how to define each of these categories, we tend to think we “know them when we see them.” Books are something we read, toys are something we (mostly by children) play with, and ephemera are things we expect to linger only fleetingly after serving an immediate purpose.

Embossed chromolithographed upper wrapper of Tuck’s “Toy Army.”

Yet many children’s books call this distinction into question–they often contain reading matter, items to play with (which sometimes pop up or even detach from the text block or book itself), and material not meant to last very long, especially once a child makes use of it.

One such item is The Toy Army, issued by Raphael Tuck & Sons between 1907 and 19101, as part of Father Tuck’s “Panorama” Series. Measuring a mere 12 cm. in height, this small booklet-format publication is barely taller than a miniature book. It features a bright, chromolithographed upper wrapper, featuring two toy soldier figures (note the base on the guardsman), strongly reminiscent of lead figures manufactured in England’s William Britain Company at the time, with the outlines of the figures embossed to heighten the effect. On the reverse of the wrapper is a set of detailed assembly instructions, “How to Make Each Figure Stand Separately and Form Innumerable Tableaux.” Following, is a little four-page poem with the caption title, “The Little Wooden Soldier of the Toy Army,” which begins:

Only a little Wooden Soldier,
Ready the foe to fight,
Battling for King and Country,
Striving with all his might.

“Instructions” on inside wrapper, the beginning of the poem, and the first leaf of toy soldiers folded-out (joined to green bases as shown here).

While most of the poem extols the bravery and sense of duty of the anthropomorphized toy soldier, marching off to serve, a touch of pathos is added later by the lines which refocus the poem on his qualities as a toy–an object of play–marred by child’s play.

Here comes the little Wooden Soldier,
Well he has played his part,
But faded and worn his paint is,
Uniform no more smart.

Now see the little Wooden Soldier…
There on the Nurs’ry floor.

The poignant view of the cast off little toy solder is somewhat reminiscent of Hans Christian Andersen’s earlier “Steadfast Tin Soldier.” But in Tucks’s poem, the story ultimately has a happy ending for the little Wooden Soldier, rewarded for his service with repainting:

And once more he’s been painted
A handsome blue and red.

Following the poem is a six-leaf cardboard accordion-fold, including five leaves of chromolithographed mounted hussars, guardsmen, and military bandsmen toy soldiers–most mustachioed and one wearing a monocle.

Five-leaf accordion-fold with toy soldiers for readers to cut out, assemble, and arrange in “innumerable tableaux.”

All are depicted standing on toy bases, including rollers in the case of the mounted figures, which perhaps helped their three-dimensional inspirations roll along–a significantly “interactive” feature for a 19th century toy! Apart from inhabiting in the same general realm of toy soldiers, they have no apparent connection to the verse text.

Regimental flag-bearing mustachioed guardsman, replete with monocle.

A sixth green color-printed leaf adds punch-out bases for the figures “in different sizes to fit the different objects,” as the Instructions detail, which are intended to enable the cut-out figures to stand. The plain gray obverse of this leaf serves as the book’s lower wrapper, and a thin piece of white publisher’s tape binds the accordion-fold and upper wrapper together. While the book’s imprint identifies it as having been “designed in England,” it also specifies that is was “printed in Berlin,” so it’s certainly quite possible that the depictions of the toy soldiers recall designs of lead figures in Germany, where they were also very popular children’s toys at the time, as well as those in England.

The fact that the Cotsen copy is in almost perfect condition, certainly a plus for the world of bibliography, suggests that it never served the purpose for which it was printed: serving as a child’s play-thing. Otherwise, this ephemeral piece of reading matter/plaything would likely only have survived in publisher’s catalogs or second-hand descriptions.

The Toy Army, is identified as part of Father Tuck’s “Panorama” Series on its upper wrapper, as is the similarly-formatted Cotsen copy of Tuck’s: Beauty and the Beast, which also has an embossed chromolithographed cover, a page of assembly instructions on the inside front wrapper, four pages of text, and a six-leaf accordion fold (comprised of five chromolithographed leaves of figures to cut out and a leaf of green punch-out bases.

Tuck’s “Panorama Series” Beauty and the Beast, with several chromolithographed leaves opened out, including those showing a teddy-bear-like beast before, and after, his transformation.

Neither of these books presents a broad panoramic view meant to be displayed once a reader opens up a number of conjoint fold-out leaves (much less, a larger scene on rollers) but some of Tuck’s other titles in this series seem to have been “panoramas” in the more usual sense of the term. Tuck apparently produced several series that included either panorama items or books with fold-out leaves to be cut out, including Father Tuck’s “Panorama” Series, which included at least eight titles, and the “slightly later” Father Tuck’s Picture Panoramas, which included a slightly different group of titles and a set of printed instructions similar to those shown above.2

One of the Toy Army’s accordion-fold leaves also includes a small shield printed with the number “5,” which at first seems as if it might be part of regimental information about the toy soldiers. But since Beauty and the Beast has a similar shield with the number “6,” these would seem to be series or publisher numbers. Once again, having a couple of similar books to compare side-by-side yields information that would be difficult, if not impossible, to deduce from a single item.

Interior leaves from The Toy Army and Beauty and the Beast: title numbers 5 and 6 in “Father Tuck’s ‘Panorama’ Series”?

Notes:

Date based on the opening of Tuck’s Berlin and Montreal offices in 1907 and imprint’s wording (“Their Majesties The King & Queen…”), which was used until 1910 (cf. Whitton, B. & M., Collector’s Guide to Raphael Tuck & Sons, p. 6).

This appears to be what today’s foodies call a heritage breed of bird without the modern factory-farm turkey’s huge breast (it’s actually a wild turkey). According to the plate’s explanatory text, the turkey was brought from American to Europe by Jesuit missionaries in 1524 and was named after the country of Turkey from whence so many luxuries were imported.

The Illustrated Book of Natural History in Four Parts. Part I. Printed in Oil Colors by Henry B. Ashmead. Philadelphia: American Sunday-School Union, c. 1858.

The vegetarian alternative

This recipe (or elementary food sculpture) shows that Joost Elfers, Saxton Freyman, and Johannes van Dam were real Johnny-come-latelies when it comes to the art of playing with food.The vegetarian alternative

Elizabeth and Louise Bache. When Mother Lets Us Make Candy. New York: Moffat, Yard and Company, 1915.

The state-of-the-art kitchen circa 1820

The Comic Adventures of Old Dame Trot, and Her Cat: Correctly Printed from the Original in the Hubbardonian Library. London: J. Harris and Son, 1820.

Dinner is served!

The Comic Adventures of Old Dame Trot, and Her Cat: Correctly Printed from the Original in the Hubbardonian Library. London: J. Harris and Son, 1820.

The sommelier has selected a very special bottle of wine for tonight

The Comic Adventures of Old Dame Trot, and Her Cat: Correctly Printed from the Original in the Hubbardonian Library. London: J. Harris and Son, 1820.

“No dessert for you, young lady, until you eat those Brussel sprouts!”

Each holiday has its symbols and icons, but few can compete with Halloween, with its vivid cast of ghosts, goblins, witches, full moons, black cats, and the legion of supporting figures–all reborn for modern festive holiday amusement from a cast of spirit-world characters that originally had much less benevolent connotations.

“Halloween” detail from the frontispiece to the Blue Poetry Book by Andrew Lang (Longmans, 1891)

Halloween’s origins date from a time when most people believed, quite literally, in the existence of fairies, sprites, ghosts, and supernatural beings lurking “out there” in the darkness. Its antecedents include the Celtic end-of-summer rituals of Samhain, meant to ward off demons and evil spirits, other festive customs and holidays mitigating the gathering darkness of winter, and, of course, the early Christian religious holiday. All Saints Day–or the evening before a hallowed day, Hallow’s eve. But in much the same way that fairies, giants, talking animals, and magical folklore creatures of all shapes and forms have been appropriated into the realm of childhood imagination, so too has Halloween.

Andrew Lang: Folklorist and Fairy Tale Anthologist

Andrew Lang (1844-1912) certainly looms large as one of the nineteenth-century figures who helped to integrate folklore and fairy tales into the canon of children’s literature. Academic, writer, cultural anthropologist, folklorist, historian, translator, poet, novelist, and both a writer and compiler of children’s stories, Lang was an intellectual polyglot and something of a Victorian oddball in an era known for literary eccentricity.

A student of the famed Benjamin Jowett at Oxford’s BalliolCollege, Lang gained a First, was named a Fellow of Merton College, only to resign seven years later, following his marriage, and move to London for a writing career.

Advertisement for Lang’s works appearing in the Pink Fairy Book (Longmans, 1897)

Lang became interested in folklore and anthropology at a time when both disciplines were in their formative stages as areas of study, and he made major contributions to scholarship in these areas, authoring a number of scholarly works and collections of folk tales. Viewed in retrospect, these books suggest themes and ideas that would soon manifest themselves in Lang’s own collections of folk stories and fairy tales for children, as well as in works he authored himself.

In Myth, Ritual, and Religion (London: Longmans, Green & Co., 1887 ) for instance, Lang explored the relation of myth and religion various cultures as part of what he termed an effort to “understand how, and when, and why the ancestors of the civilized races filled the blank of their past by tales about bestial gods and godlike beasts” (p. 1).

The Book of Dreams and Ghosts (London: Longmans, Green & Co., 1897), a “collection of evidence” with multiple chapters on ghosts, “bogies,” and hauntings, Lang’s prefatory remarks provide historical and cultural context for this phenomenon. Discussing ghosts, apparitions, and hallucinations, Lang referred to the “old doctrine of ‘ghosts,’ [which] regarded them as actual spirits of the living and the dead … a view of the simplest philosophy of the savage.” (p. vi).

Next he outlined how such apparitions had later been regarded as “the work of deceitful devils” by Reformation writers, how such “phantasms” and “apparitions” had been dismissed by “the common-sense of the eighteenth century,” and how such “hallucinatory appearances” were being addressed by “modern science” in the nineteenth-century and taken seriously as psychological phenomenon requiring explanation by investigators of the stature of William James, whose 1890 Principles of Psychology Lang cites. Sometimes a ghost story was not just a ghost story.

Lang’s Colour Fairy Books

Cover of Lang’s Green Fairy Book (Longmans, 1892)

These other works make it clear that Lang’s series of twelve different Colour FairyBooks, issued individually from 1889-1910, must be seen not only as collections of stories for children, but also as documentation of popular culture on a world-wide scale, guided by scholarly principles. Lang, after all, included a citation of the source at the end of most selections in the Fairy Books, a feature presumably lost on younger readers.

And the range of materials collected is strikingly global. In addition to sixty French fairy tales overall, (including those of d’Aulnoy and Perrault), the Fairy Books include fifty Scandinavian tales, as well as those originating from Africa, Japan, Germany, Hungary, the Middle East, and Native Americans.

Cover of the Yellow Fairy Book (Longmans, 1894)

In his preface to the Blue Fairy Book, the first of these books, Lang himself noted adaptations from Apollodorus, Simonides, and Pindar “by the editor,” as well as the somewhat surprising inclusion of a popular version of the “Voyage to Lilliput” from Gulliver’s Travels.

The Blue Fairy Book & Ford’s “Halloween” Illustrations

Cover of the Blue Fairy Book (Longmans, 1889)

Fairy tales and folklore generally involve the fantastical, the supernatural, and the otherworldly. But even so, a number of Henry Justice Ford’s wood engraved illustrations in the Blue Fairy Book conjure up the idea of Halloween.

Before we even open the book, the uncredited, gilt-stamped design on the its midnight blue upper cover, presents a striking image of a broomstick-riding witch flying in front of a full moon.

This design seems intended to evoke generally the “phantasms, ghosts, and apparitions” from Lang’s spirit world that lurk in the pages within. And it stands apart from cover designs of other, later, Fairy Books, which often feature fairies or versions of illustrations from a story within.

The Blue Fairy Book’s second tale, “Prince Hyacinth and the Dear Little Princess,” tells the story of a king seeking the hand of a princess foretold to marry only the man clever enough to tread on the tail of her beloved cat. In Lang’s narrative, the cat, not surprisingly, “arches his back” at the potential malefactor.

Recognizing the dramatic potential of the scene, illustrator Ford goes beyond the text and shows us is a black cat in the classic “Halloween pose”–hissing, back arched, and ears back–being pursued somewhat comically by the king, toe-dancing after the tail. Adding to the humor, the beautiful princess seems so uninterested by the proceedings that she seems to almost doze off in boredom.

While Ford could not have anticipated the subsequent development of modern Halloween iconography that his illustration calls to mind today, the association of hissing black cats, black magic, and other-worldly affairs was traditional. Cats have had a long history of association with magic, magicians, and the supernatural, and cat abuse of various kinds occurs relatively often in fairy tales, folklore, and nursery stories.

Another black cat–again the product of the artist’s inspiration–looms in one of Ford’s illustrations for the “Yellow Dwarf,” a tale from d’Aulnoy. The narrative relates how the Yellow Dwarf, “mounted on a great Spanish cat” (presumably a Spanish Lynx), springs out for battle “with a terrible noise,” and proceeds to “set spurs to his cat, which yelled horribly, and leapt hither and thither–terrifying everybody except the brave King.”

Ford’s “Spanish cat” from the “Yellow Dwarf” (Blue Fairy Book, p. 40)

As Lang continues the story, the sun becomes “as red as blood … thunder crashed and lightning seemed as if it must burn up everything … two basilisks appeared … and fire flew from their mouths and ears until they looked like flaming furnaces.” A terrifying scene–but one Ford opts not to depict, choosing instead the scene of the dwarf actually emerging from the box … astride, not a Lynx, but a wide-eyed, screeching black cat, claws at the ready.

In terms of other imagery apropos of Halloween, Ford presents a demonic scene to accompany “Why the Sea is Salt,” a tale about a poor, hungry brother tasked to take a ham to Hell–“Dead Man’s Hall,” in Lang’s version. Lang’s narrative describes how “people great and small,” presumably demonic, haggle with him over the ham there; but Ford renders a much more visual and dramatic scene–a smoky charnel-house room full of demons, replete with one holding a trident, a scene that enhances the fearfulness of the scene considerably.

Demons from “Why the Sea is Salt” (Blue Fairy Book, p. 137)

The exact nature of Lang’s collaboration with Ford, the principal illustrator of the Blue Fairy Book, is known, but Eleanor Langstaff notes that he “worked with the illustrators” in his role as general editor readying the Fairy Books for publication. Whatever their relationship, Ford’s work complements Lang’s narratives and extends them, as these three examples demonstrate. Taking elements of the folktales, and reworking them with a vivid imagination in a manner evoking the Pre-Raphaelites, Ford’s illustrations develop Lang’s themes, sometimes in a manner most apt for Halloween.

A midsummer night’s dream, or nightmare, in the nighttime sky? Ford’s frontispiece from Lang’s anthology of verse, the Blue Poetry Book (Longmans, 1891), depicting a scene worthy of any Halloween

]]>https://blogs.princeton.edu/cotsen/2010/10/halloween-treats-h-j-fords-illustrations-for-andrew-langs-blue-fairy-book/feed/0Politics and Picture Books: Sir Harry Heraldhttps://blogs.princeton.edu/cotsen/2010/10/excise-crisis-uncovered-or-politics-and-picture-books/
https://blogs.princeton.edu/cotsen/2010/10/excise-crisis-uncovered-or-politics-and-picture-books/#commentsWed, 13 Oct 2010 13:55:21 +0000http://blogs-preview.princeton.edu/cotsen/2010/10/13/excise-crisis-uncovered-or-politics-and-picture-books/Continue reading →]]>This is a copy of Sir Harry Herald’s Graphical Representation of the Dignitaries of England…with the Regalia used at the Coronation (1820)—and it shows George IV and his estranged Queen Caroline of Brunswick

What’s the difference between these two pictures?

First edition of 1820

Third edition of 1821

So why was the pretty young Queen removed from the picture?

The Prince Regent (the future George IV) had been waiting in the wings since 1811, when his father George III descended into madness. The prospect after a new monarch after all this time was probably reason enough for the children’s book publisher John Harris to bring out Sir Harry Herald in the new Cabinet of Amusement and Instruction series. (It has been suggested that Sir Harry Herald was inspired by Charles Lamb’s Book of the Ranks and Dignities of British Society (1805), but close comparison of the two works does not bear this out.)

The ceremony promised to be spectacular, as the new monarch, having been ruinously extravagant his entire life, was intimately involved in the arrangements and planned to spare no expense. Nearly six months would pass from the king’s death on January 29, 1820 until the coronation on July 19, so there was ample time for the design and construction of fabulous robes and new crown for George, among other things.

Presumably this delay was also to Harris’s advantage in making ready by mid-July the text and handsome wood-engravings of Sir Harry Herald. But Harris could not have foreseen the next act in the royal marriage’s roiling drama.

In 1794, George had agreed to marry his first cousin, Caroline of Brunswick, who was a Protestant of royal blood, which meant Parliament would increase his allowance, allowing the settlement of huge debts. The wedding was a disaster, as the two were obviously mismatched and each found the other repulsive. Since 1814, Caroline had been living abroad in exchange for a generous allowance. But now that she was nominally the Queen of England–albeit estranged from her husband, who had initiated divorce proceedings against her–she returned to England on June 5, where she was put on trial for adultery.

Championed by the opposition movement and beloved by the masses, she was found innocent at the end of June. Although she was advised not to take her place as Queen during the coronation, she turned up at Westminster Abbey, was denied entrance, and made a spectacle of herself.

The surprising number of changes large and small to the different editions Sir Harry Herald suggest that Harris was trying to respond the rapid and surprising succession of events.

Queen’s Regalia, 1820 (1st) ed.

Could the color depiction of a harmonious royal couple in Westminster abbey that appeared in the first two editions have been hastily made in early July, to reflect Caroline’s apparent triumph? Was the “replacement” image of George being crowned without his consort in attendance quickly contrived a few months later for the 1821 third edition in order to reflect reality? (Having been barred from

Westminster Abbey, Caroline died three weeks later, leaving England without a Queen.) The picture of the Queen’s coronation regalia, which Caroline never wore, was also excised from this edition.

Opening leaves of the 1824 (4th) ed., with ills. of both the king and queen excised.

And does the disappearance of the king’s portrait–oddly, the only depiction of the king in this “Coronation” book–from the fourth edition of 1824 indicate the publisher’s (and perhaps the nation’s) deep disenchantment with its monarch, whose popularity had plummeted shortly after coming to power?

1821 (2nd) ed. title-page, with George IV’s “Coronation Medal”

Ironically, a picture of the Queen’s regalia (unidentified as such) adorns the front wrapper of the 1824 edition, replacing a Coronation medallion of George, portrayed much like Augustus, which adorned the 1821 edition’s wrapper. The hand-colored engraving of the Queen’s regalia had appeared in the 1820 first edition but it was then unceremoniously omitted from the 1821 third edition–along with the queen herself.

Maybe it didn’t happen exactly this way. But two other changes suggest Harris was well aware that demand for coronation memorabilia would not, unlike George’s popularity, plummet after the event. The lovely illustration of the gentleman and lady in court dress in the 1820 first edition was excised from later editions.

Gentleman & Lady in “court dress” from the 1820 ed.

The 1821 third edition also added an illustration of the magnificent new crown George had made for the coronation (which he seems to be wearing in the “God Save the King” portrait).

Illustration of the “New Imperial Crown” (not depicted in the 1820 ed.), with the crown formerly-known as the “Imperial Crown” (now labeled “St. Edwards Crown”).

Could it be that Harris was trying to ensure that Sir Harry Herald, one of the most visually attractive titles in the Cabinet of Amusement and Instruction, would not become dated prematurely despite the tumult of the times? A close comparison of the illustrations in these three editions (see below) certainly suggests that Harris was busily engaged in changing this title for some reason. The publisher even changed the title of the book slightly to emphasize the coronation and the spectacular–some of it newly redesigned–coronation regalia.

George IV being crowned in the 1821 ed. (“God save the King”) with overlay of the New Imperial Crown (from leaf 15. Are they they the same?

Thus, Sir Harry Herald’s Graphical Representation of the Dignitaries of England, Shewing the Different Ranks…with the Regalia used at the Coronation becomes Sir Harry Herald’s Graphical Representation of the Coronation Regalia, with the Degrees and Costume of Different Ranks. The regalia assumes pride of place over the dignitaries…and even over the monarch(s) wearing it!

Opening leaves of the 1820, 1821, and 1824 editions of Harry Herald, showing the progressively diminishing royal presence.

Comparison of the leaves in Cotsen’s three editions of Sir Harry Herald

Santa Claus is now enthroned as the popular icon of Christmas. The instantly recognizable jolly old man dressed in his red suit and hat, both trimmed with white fur, smiles out at us from books, magazines, and advertising materials, as we see him depicted in Whitman’s 1940 edition of “The Night Before Christmas.”

But was Santa always “Santa,” and did he always look like this? Well, yes and no, Virginia.

While Santa’s origins apparently date back to the 4th century Nicholas of Myra, a popular minor saint, the figure now so firmly rooted in popular consciousness probably owes most to Clement Clarke Moore’s poem “A Visit From St. Nicholas” and to illustrations of political cartoonist Thomas Nast (who famously satirized the notorious Boss Tweed, among others).

Moore’s poem–opening with the well-known lines, “‘Twas the night before Christmas, and all through the house…”–was first published anonymously in the Troy Sentinel in 1823. It presents Santa flying on a reindeer-drawn sleigh and coming down the chimney with the familiar bundle of toys on his back, now familiar parts of Santa lore. But it also describes him as “a right jolly old elf” “dressed all in fur” from head to foot and covered with “ashes and soot” (from the chimney).

And many nineteenth-century illustrations show Santa as more of a gnome than a grandpa figure, and one dressed in a wide variety of clothing, as well. Prang’s 1864 edition of “A Visit From St. Nicholas” (shown here in a facsimile) presents Santa much like Moore describes him–an elfish figure in brown fur outfit.

Over thirty illustrations rendered by Thomas Nast for Harper’s Weekly from 1863 to 1886 are generally credited with shaping the popular image of Santa Claus into something more like the one we know today. Over the years, Nast’s Santa changes from a brown-suited elf, so small that he stands on a chair to reach the fireplace, to the red-suited man more like that we’re so familiar with today, as we can see in these two adaptations of Nast illustrations.

Santa Claus & His Works (New York: McLoughlin Bros., 1871-1886)

A Child’s Christmas Cookbook (Denver: Denver Art Museum, 1964)

This image later became burnished and enhanced by Christmas-card sellers and purveyors of other products (notably Coca Cola in the 1930s), who saw the tremendous visual marketing appeal of Santa in an era when Christmas was becoming increasingly commercialized.

But throughout the nineteenth-century, Santa was presented in a variety of costumes and poses on the way to becoming the familiar icon of today. Perhaps no publisher’s work shows this more clearly than that of McLoughlin Brothers, as evidenced by these covers of two their annual publication catalogs from the 1890s and the final illustration from one of their editions of Santa Claus & His Works.

]]>https://blogs.princeton.edu/cotsen/2008/12/images-of-santa/feed/0Happy Halloween!https://blogs.princeton.edu/cotsen/2008/10/happy-halloween/
https://blogs.princeton.edu/cotsen/2008/10/happy-halloween/#commentsFri, 31 Oct 2008 17:25:09 +0000http://blogs-preview.princeton.edu/cotsen/2008/10/31/happy-halloween/Continue reading →]]>The Cotsen Children’s Library opened to the public eleven years ago today. Because Halloween is such an important day for children, candymakers, and the fabricators of costumes, the 31st of October 2008 seemed a propitious time to launch the Cotsen blog.

In the spirit of the holiday, this first post might be considered a swag of seasonal eye candy celebrating those things that go bump in the Cotsen stacks.

This first gathering of pictures was gleaned during the review of an interlibrary loan request and a truck of duplicate copies. Almost any job at Cotsen is an opportunity to prowl for images. This week I went looking for scary creatures and was not disappointed. “The Boy Who Became a Goblin” in Anna Wahlenberg’s Swedish Fairy Tales, tr. Axel Wahlenberg (Chicago: A. C. McClurg & Co., 1901) contains this charmer by Helen Maitland Armstrong (1869-1948), the stained glass artist, who was also the sister of the binding designer Margaret Armstrong.

This alarming picture of the smuggler Bill Brines being transformed into an albatross appears on p. 130 and the cover of Coppertop Cruises: The Wonderful Voyage of the Good Ship “Queercraft” (Melbourne, Melbourne Publishing Co., [ca. 1920]). It is the work of the well-known Australasian fairy artist, Harold Gaze (1885-1962), who was a contemporary of Ida Rentoul Outhwaite. Gaze seems to have reined in his sense of the grotesque in the color plates, which are much more conventional and decorative in style, than the line art. To see some examples of his work in color, visit http://www.australianfairyartists.com/howard_gaze/index.html

On Halloween night, witches are supposed to gather for revels with the devil and to create mayhem for the unsuspecting. But it is hardly a new trend to try and domesticate witches, as in this picture of a rather sedate tea-party hosted by Dame Durden by Sheila E. Braine in Happy Hearts: Stories in Verse and Prose for Boys and Girls (Chicago, Akron, New York: The Saalfield Publishing Company, c.1912). There is a smudgy signature in the right-hand corner of the image which I can’t make out. The names of authors and illustrators in the volume are British—so I suspect an unauthorized reprint of an English children’s book.

Ivan Bilibin’s magnificent color illustration of the Russian witch Baba Yaga in Vasilisa the Beautiful (St. Petersburg, 1902) must be one of the best known pictures of any crone in the annals of the folk or fairy tale. But I fell in love with this old hag the minute I spotted her on the left-hand corner of the plate for letter B in Elizaveta Merkur’evna Bem’s Azbuka (Paris: I. S. Lapin, 1913-1914). Bem died before completing the fourth and last fascicle of this splendid alphabet, which offers a fascinating contrast to the much better known one by Alexander Benois.